The Bailout: Public Anger, Private Talks

[Chuck]

A modest amount of regulation over the past generation would have avoided this mess. Instead, it will probably insure the election of Barack Obama and very likely too much regulation that will stunt growth. Wall Street was behaving too much like lassie faire capitalism in the late 1800's, inviting a backlash to possible socialism.

If the Bush Administration had exercised some control, he could have been far more successful and McCain would have won in a landslide. This is what I'd preferred, but the greedy and bad decision makers were unchecked.

I liken what Wall Street's failure to someone driving my MIMA Insight pretending they have five traction battery packs, beging for a replacement of the one they beat to death....unregulated capitailism is unsustainable and leads to socialism.

[bullwinkle428]

Originally Posted by lamebums

And yes let's not turn this into a political Bush-bashing thread.

Good luck with that, considering the guy's approval rating has slipped to 19%!


http://americanresearchgroup.com/economy/

[booferama]

Both parties are responsible for what's going on, but it's worth noting that Phil Gramm's legislative work in 1999 ended any meaningful regulation of the banking industry. (And by the way, he lobbies for banks and is McCain's economic advisor.)

Free markets are a nice idea in theory, but regulation and oversight are necessary to some degree. I'm not sure exactly what that degree is, but since the S&L scandal the pattern we have is too little regulation, followed by a scandal that leads to a great deal of regulation. Once the crisis fades into memory, a process of deregulation begins that leads to corruption and crisis.

[koreberg]

@booferama

And lets not forget that it was passed under the clinton era.

700 billion so this guy can help his buddies keep their golden parachutes. Some of the top executives were pulling in 80 million a year each.

Thats like paying the bag boy at your local grocery store 500k a year so he can cram all your groceries into a bag that will break before you leave the store.


All these guys can make these things float, just turn in some of their ridiculous saleries in place for stock options in the companies and use that as operating capitol. Start negotiating mortgages instead of simply repoing and not being able to sell.

Instead they want to continue to rape the little guy by increasing his taxes.

For a president and party that claims it likes the free market, they need to let the market work when their buddies are getting screwed, the same way they've let it work while the rest of us have got screwed for the past century.

[jstol3]

If I can be so bold as to claim to be an advisor to the president I will. I do have a direct line to his office (comments@whitehouse.gov). I have tried to advise him about the gasoline price spiral, The problems of ILLEGAl immigration, unfettered speculation in the commodities markets, junk mortgages given to uncreditworthy people and a host of other problems and he isn't responing or acting. I think that he shot his own legacy in the foot. I think that, at this juncture, he is un-responsive and DOA.

The bailout is a farce and should not happen. Let the execs and the companies they ran take their lumps!

Common sense is something that has been missing from the American political scene for some time now!

Enough for politics! Let's move on to hypermiling!

[xcel]

Hi Jstol3:

___For a person with that kind of potential power, thank you for hypermiling! About the only sane thing I have heard from this Administration in a long time was your post.

___Thank you and good Luck

___Wayne

[brick]

I don't think he meant that literally.

[hobbit]

Heh, you *think* you have a direct line by emailing anything
to whitehouse.gov. Nice illusion, isn't it? Any guesses as
to the volume of mail that goes through such destinations and
gets sent straight to /dev/null per hour?
.
_H*

[gershon]

Bush is trying very hard to blame the bailout on greedy Wall Street speculators in the same way he let's the illusion that the war in Iraq is based on 9/11 even though it's his own personal vendetta.

Keep in mind the banks and mortgage lenders were FORCED to accept these toxic loans. Fannie Mae fought against them in 1998. And then later, I think it was in 2004, they lost a suit by the government when they tried to take a loss by writing down these loans. Time has proven them right, but I don't see the government wanting to return the $250 million fine to the shareholders.

A bailout without limits on who can take a mortgage and other loans will just result in more of the same. How can we trust the same people who created the problem to know how to fix it?

The senators from Colorado have said they are receiving tons of emails speaking out against the bailout. They specifically said these aren't your typical form emails, but individual opinions that have more impact on their decisions.

The country is in a mess with a trend towards bailing out those who fail at the expense of those who make good decisions. There doesn't seem to be any place to go with our money except investing in toilet paper which is likely to double in price in the next year. (There is a lot of crap in our economy.)

[Chuck]

We have taxation with misrepresentation.