Congress should promise the $700B bailout, the same way Bush promised Kofi Anan $10B “for African redevelopment” to get Anan’s Security Council resolution approval for War of Terror, but then never paid a 1¢.
Congress should promise the $700B bailout the same way Bush promised Hamad Karzai $10B for Afghanistan, but then never paid a 1¢, or rather, diverted that $10B to the KBR Halliban Iraq money pot.
Congress should promise the $700B bailout the same way Bush promised New Orleans $60B for Katrina, but then never paid a fraction of that, or rather, diverted the balance to … who knows where?
There’s never been any audits!!! The bailout is another tax pay slush fund money pot!!! There are no stipulations where that money must go, or where it may not go. They can buy “assets” in anything! They can buy “assets” in bogus paper that *doesn’t even exist yet*! The Fed can raise the prime, and force asset buys of all the new resets!! THERE IS NO SUNSET CLAUSE!
And they can use that promised asset buy as incentive for recipients to contribute to the Republican Juggernaut! “You want a bailout, fund a Rethug PAC!”
The bailout is a tax pay slush fund money pot!!
Saying “the Bailout Fund *has the right* to receive shares equal to the purchase price of the assets sold is *meaningless*! Buffett has received PERPETUAL PREFERRED SHARES $1 for $1 for his $5B buy-in, up to the value of GSs real hard assets. He didn’t risk a single penny, underwriting a fully-collateralized deal, and he’s gonna make a $5 profit off this Bailout!
But worst of all, forgiving the looting and the looters, worst of all will be the re-perpetuation of egregiously overpriced cost of living that will soon beggar our children, and enslave our grandchildren.
Give some thought to aging Baby Boomers, abandoned in their wheelchairs at empty shopping malls, by their children who can no longer afford to feed them. Give some thought to State welfare homes and mental asylums, crowded to overflowing, Boomers shoved in dark corners of paint-peeled, blackened-linoleum outsource homes run by minimum-wage Ju-Vee dropout orderlies and Guatemalan nurse staff, under a Pelosian administrator squeezing every blood drop for the corporate bottom line.
But I don’t want anymore apple sauce!
Glrrk, urrk….

Posted by: Apfel Muss | Sep 28 2008 18:45 utc | 3

So where can I buy government houses at discount prices? I wanna be a contender, get my slice o’ the pie….I wanna be somebody!
Or do they all go to the ones who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and are against abortion?

Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 28 2008 21:12 utc | 5

japan – rare trade defecit

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 28 2008 21:56 utc | 7

beq@8:
It seems to me that when typing you added three zeroes to the quotient of 85 000 000 000/200 000 000. I obtain only 425 dollars for the adult individuals that you suppose are in the USA.
Frankly sarcasm only goes so far, a little may be amusing but a constant berating of the USA becomes tedious. After all I compare the US of A with other countries and I don’t find it so deficient; yes there abortions, frauds, foreign invasions, an overwhelming universal culture but in general I think events are reasonable. As I have indicated before all this money is purely imaginary and the objective of its production is to create the appropriate psychological attitude. That we are moving towards absolute socialism is undeniable but perhaps the evolution of mankind demands it.

Posted by: jlcg | Sep 28 2008 22:45 utc | 9

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00?
monopoly money! great…

Posted by: parker bros | Sep 28 2008 22:48 utc | 11

Or to look at it from another angle: you’re a conservative, white Republican Congressman from a district that’s mostly conservative, white and Republican. Every two years, a Democrat of some kind makes a run for your seat, and you have to spend $2-3 million on your campaign. Since this money’s hard to raise, you try–and succeed–at bringing Bush or Cheney to a fundraiser, good for $1 million. You raise the rest through all kinds of inventive efforts, and you win by 1-2% of the popular vote. This is a Good Thing….
But who bought the tickets to that fundraiser? Who but the local captains of finance and their various courtiers?
Comes this outrageous legislation, which may (for reasons unknown) put the bank out of business, owned and operated by the people who bought the tickets for that pricey fund-raiser. They will feel betrayed–not only by Bush, but by the congressman who brought in Bush to raise money.
Says the banker: “Have I dropped $20,000 on these dudes–have my clients who bought seats at the tables of my fundraiser–made this costly investment in order to go out of business?
“If so, I feel like that poor guy in Texas, the man with his face blown away by Cheney, and so I’ll settle for nothing less than the utter destruction of this (to me) suicidal proposal.”
42-3

Posted by: alabama | Sep 28 2008 23:42 utc | 13

Numbers aren’t my friends, obviously.

Posted by: beq | Sep 29 2008 0:08 utc | 15

maxcrat, my friend
lest you think there might have been, there was no judgement in what i said – certainly not about you – i think like most men booze finds the weaknesses, easily – & because i lived a very public life it mediated the nausea that passed for social relations in a world gone wrong – the burlesque that goes with booze made attacking the person much easier because the work itself was invincible & think in the end because i live & work in very alientated cultures, france less so perhaps but its getting there
perhaps seeing what is happening in america through a glass would make some sense of what is clearly unmediated madness & when you hear both the democrats & the republicans tonight they dresses themselves in a disgrace that only a drunk like shane mcgowan could forgive – tho i must admit there is a soft spot for barney frank who apears to me very unamerican (has he got no top teeth – there is something odd but quaint in the way he speaks – but he seems realer than the rest of them
but yes it is clear – it is going to get a great deal worse before it gets better – but tho life might get more primitive – i think it will be less corrupted

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 29 2008 0:49 utc | 17

Maxcrat ,
I had a very similar thought.
b’s headliner is parody but too damn close to reality for me to be able to laugh.
I agree completely r’giap, the collapse of empire, even though I am still a part of it, is truly a gift if I am so inclined to make it one. I my case I live in an environ where the culture is geared toward interdependent community action and livelihood and if there is indeed to be a future after the dust of empire settles, I’m trusting that it will be taking root here.
Frankly sarcasm only goes so far, a little may be amusing but a constant berating of the USA becomes tedious.
I disagree jlcg.
An item that your list of reasonable American comparisons omits is that it has become the loci of the most ruthlessly pathological and rabidly malicious well armed gangsters in history. I think I would find b’s sarcasm tedious only if I were still in denial. b is a goad to me and I’m appreciative for that.

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 29 2008 3:00 utc | 19

Chris Floyd: The Resurrectionists: Beltway’s Big Money Cultists Bail Out the Dead

As usual — as always — the Democrats have handed their ostensible opponents a razor-sharp sword. You can hear it now: “That radical liberal feminist from San Francisco, that stubby little Massachusetts homo — they’re the ones who did this to you! Liberals and Jews and homos, they’ve stabbed you in the back again!”
As always, this message will be sponsored by the very Wall Street wolves which the Democrats are now falling all over themselves to save. The Democratic sell-out will, once again, be used to discredit any notion of ameliorating the most savage effects of unrestricted corporate power: “See what happens when them libruls monkey with the free market?” Just as soon as the biggest fraudsters and grafters behind the meltdown have filled their coffers with enough taxpayer loot to feel safe again, the extremist sect of “free market fundamentalism” will raise its banner over Wall Street — and Washington — once again.

Posted by: b | Sep 29 2008 4:08 utc | 21

Floyd Norris: Treasury Would Emerge With Vast New Power

The draft legislation, which will be put to a House vote on Monday, gives Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his successor extraordinary power to decide how the $700 billion bailout fund is spent. For example, if he thinks it wise, he may buy not only mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, but any other financial instrument.
…
Mr. Paulson can choose to buy from any financial institution that does business in the United States, or from pension funds, with wide discretion over what he will buy and how much he will pay. Under most circumstances, banks owned by foreign governments are not eligible for the money, but under some conditions, the secretary can choose to bail out foreign central banks.
…
Under the bill, the Treasury is to buy the securities at prices he deems appropriate. Mr. Paulson may set prices through auctions but is not required to do so.
Rarely if ever has one man had such broad authority to spend government money as he sees fit, with no rules requiring him to seek out the lowest possible price for assets being purchased.
…
Congress forced the Bush administration to agree to a provision requiring financial institutions that sell securities to the program to give an equity or debt stake to the government. But Mr. Paulson will have wide latitude in deciding how large a stake is needed. His discretion in setting those limits could have a major impact on how many institutions choose to participate.
The limits on executive pay in the bill, also added in response to pressure from legislators, appear unlikely to be used very often.
…
One of the most important decisions the secretary will make is the price the government pays for securities. Here again, He is directed to “make such purchases at the lowest price” that is “consistent with the purposes of this act.”
Those purposes, however, are expansive and leave him room to pay well over the lowest price available if he wishes to do so.
…
The bill also sets up an oversight board, which is directed to “ensure that the policies implemented” by Mr. Paulson are proper. Mr. Paulson is to be one of the five members of the board watching over his actions, joined by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Housing Secretary and the director of the Federal Home Finance Agency.
…
The bill does allow legal challenges, but attempts to assure they are quickly handled and that the most important decisions can be challenged only on constitutional grounds, not on the ground that they conflict with some other law.
While the bill does not drop the accounting rule that requires banks to report on the market value of their assets — a rule that some banks believe has forced them to report excessive losses — it gives the S.E.C. permission to suspend the rule for any individual company if it thinks that is in the public’s interest. That is likely to lead to intensive lobbying of the commission.

What a mess.
Paulson got ALL points he has asked for. While the bill grew from 3 pages to some 120, the content is not much different than before.
The Democrats have been had BIG TIME. This will cost them a lot of seats in the upcoming elections.

Posted by: b | Sep 29 2008 5:10 utc | 23

Roubini: Is Purchasing $700 billion of Toxic Assets the Best Way to Recapitalize the Financial System? No! It is Rather a Disgrace and Rip-Off Benefitting only the Shareholders and Unsecured Creditors of Banks

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown. It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented – many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum – alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis. This is again a case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners.

Prediction: No Republican in the House who is up for reelection will vote for this ‘bipartisan’ bill.

Posted by: b | Sep 29 2008 7:00 utc | 25

A picture worth $700,000,000,000 words..
Smiles, smiles all around, back patting, ass kissing…
And they all lived happily ever after.
No, no, not you, you learned, What was it like during the Great Depression.
It was personally related to me by a historian, that America didn’t feel the full effects of the 1929 SMC until 32/33..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 29 2008 8:50 utc | 27

@Uncle lets face it 90% of the negative stuff about Nader is a result of aggressive dem black propagandizing that seeks to disparage Nader in order to distract from the reality that Al Gore and the rest of te dems were too weak to stand up to shrub’s vote stealing.
It is particularly foul because of course if Gore had the strength of character to resist shrub he would have attracted sufficient votes in the first place. Sufficient votes to make the poll rigging impossible.
At this stage of prez08 it is difficult to see past Nader for the most suitable candidate tag.
Not that anyone will vote for Nader even so, the aggressive dem character assassination, supported by media combines wedded to perpetuating the two party system means that even peeps who agree with pretty much everything Nader says and stands for won’t vote for him. A continual campaign nagging away in virtually every reference to Nader, everywhere, has cast him as being too uncool to vote for.
A classic example of self service oppression, no batons or jackboots required.
Yet the two party state cannot be destroyed until peeps accept that breaking it’s hold on the political process will take a lot of election cycles.
Yes it is tiresome that there is a whole 4 years or maybe 8 in that cycle but if you stop to consider that it has been abuse of the human desire for instant gratification which created this mess, surely it is possible to see that forgoing that need for immediate reward has to be part and parcel of any remedy.
There is no other alternative, continually voting for the dems expecting it to be different this time perpetuates the problem. How can amerikans expect a different outcome when they continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 29 2008 10:43 utc | 29

IMHO, Roubini (@25) pretty much nails it. Perhaps the biggest threat to the economy today is a credit crunch (freeze-up of inter-bank lending). And how-to-fix this particular problem in order to save a nations internal economy is a well known & well-studied science. While the sheer size & complexity of the USA’s economy is humongously challenging, the strategic alternatives for resolving the USA crisis are going to be essentially identical to those considered & applied in other nations mentioned in Roubini’s piece.
On the other hand, the USA’s economy is so large that it can absorb a higher level of unfavorable side-effects, moreso if prudent, effective & efficient government interventions are applied in the first place. Which is probably a major reason why this questionable $700B bailout is acceptable to the Democrats even though its effectiveness is highly in dispute.
Reasonable people may disagree on which particular strategies/tactics offer the best results but I am personally highly impressed with Roubini’s perspective. It is very consistent with pretty much all the independent thinking I had done before I came across it. It is also very consistent with a high majority of “informed & unbiased” opinion I have recently come across on the subject.
Roubini does not get much into tactics. But between Congress, the SEC/FDIC/Treasury, the ratings/audit entities and voluntary participation by entities in the banks/financial-sector theres a lot of tools available out there.
It will be interesting to see what happens in Congress. The Democrats are between a rock & a hard place. In this case, both the rock & the hard-place are courtesy of the Republicans. And its just another symptom of the softness & lack-of-spine of the Democrats that they find themselves wringing their hands once again in the face of yet another Republican squeeze.
You got to give it to the Republicans though. They have the Democratic Congress jacked-up & cornered where neither DailyKos/MoveOn, the Democrats Wall Street friends or Obama their flag-bearer can do much to help them.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Sep 29 2008 12:49 utc | 31

Futzing around with who is to get a piece of the pie as the Dems and Reps have been doing is horse trading between the powerful. Roubini’s article shows that this type of bail out is very rare. And its rarity is nor related to innovation or creativity or common sense. (See the Swedish and Swiss models. Etc.)
beq’s brother e mail, I did not follow the math, such a solution has potential, but only to recap. the banks. So citizens should receive X amount, and buy bank ‘shares’ with that money, with a no-sell clause for 5 years or so. At worst, they lose the gift, at best they get some money back, just like a lottery ticket. Kind of standard nationalization stuff. They would all go for it, but then, they choose and that is not what the PTB can accept in any shape or form.

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 29 2008 15:32 utc | 33