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Post by Hook on Sept 29, 2008 14:55:04 GMT -8
People seem to be forgetting the bailout grants immunity to all those involved. "Ok, so I fucked up. Now let me fix this for ya. No, you cannot ask me any questions or even tell me how to do things. I know this. Trust me. I'm the guy who fucked up". Cheno, where are you getting this from? Not that we all wouldn't want that to happen, but you are clearly seeing something we are apparently missing.... I hate to cite Ron Paul because citing him is like citing Raymond Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near guy). Both guys propose a lot of crazy things (and both are internet heroes) but also happen to have been very right about lots others. According to Paul, and I have no reason not to believe him, bailouts and handouts simply delayed the great depression, in turn aggravating it. Hoover didn't exactly bail out businesses, but the focus was the same: keep prices from falling. The argument is, it has happened before and we're fixing it with the same "fixes" of the past. Ludicrous.
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Post by Jon Broxton on Sept 29, 2008 14:58:26 GMT -8
Yeah, but the thing about that, Hook, is the financial sector is much more sophisticated than it was in the 1920s. Now, admittedly, I'm no expert on the background to the Great Depression, but I just can't believe that people would make the same mistakes now, knowing what happened then, if there is even a small chance of averting it.
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Post by Joseph Bat on Sept 29, 2008 15:06:49 GMT -8
Who's to say that the bailout grants immunity? I don't think for a second with the bailout the people who caused this will go unpunished. I just think right now that is priority two, not priority one.
Joe
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MikeP
Orchestrator
Posts: 537
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Post by MikeP on Sept 29, 2008 15:30:31 GMT -8
I appreciate some of the thought out arguments for the bill... especially Jon's long post on the last page. I could possibly support a bill that recognizes the fact that it is OUR money that is saving the fat cat's asses, and likewise holds them accountable to the people.
Right now, I find myself against the bill. Partly for petty reasons... it doesn't seem right that the rich get a free pass when the poor have been suffering with their house payments for many years now. However, I do have other issues:
First, we’ve tried to fix this by bailing out several companies already, and it hasn’t seemed to help so far. I think it would be critical to understand WHY it doesn’t help. I am not a fan of ‘if it doesn’t work, try harder’. I mean, if you doing the WRONG thing to begin with doing more of the wrong thing isn’t going to help! It may make it worse. The bailout plan seems to follow the same economic strategies that led to this mess in the first place.
Second, the tired (but true) argument that printing 700 billion dollars more funny money is going dilute the dollar even more and lead to inflation. We will have to adjust, and that adjustment will cause pain. Ideally, that pain will occur slowly… but what’s to say it won’t hit us all at once (again) and cause another crisis? * curious *
Third, and perhaps this is my problem, but when I hear Washington and other high ranking politicians tell me the sky is falling and we must act now now now or “your community” is screwed!!!, I grow skeptical. No doubt things will get horrible… I may very well lose my job because of this. But this language of fear being pushed by Washington (which is very similar to the language that was used to get us in Iraq) is meant to provoke a knee-jerk reaction when it is the critical we keep our heads. Oh, and there’s the fact that the original plan wanted such things as ‘no oversite’, which makes me a little curious as to the purity of Paulson’s motives.
I’m not a Ron Paul bot, but he does make one very good point. Many economists have been predicting this crash for a very long time. Why aren’t we asking as many of them as we can about what needs to be done, and if we must have a bailout plan make sure they have a part in crafting it.
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Post by christopher on Sept 29, 2008 15:38:04 GMT -8
I don't think we can blame the failure of the bailout to pass in the House on any one party, though both are trying (republicans who wanted it are saying that Pelosi's speech at the last minute caused a lot of the democrats to vote against it, while democrats blame the republicans for voting it down). This country is SO into partisan politics right now that everybody blames everybody for everything.
I have no idea what the bailout would have done for/to the economy. No one does. The question of whether bailing out AIG & co. was a good or bad thing is something I think only time will tell. While I think it's a good idea to step in and save some companies who are about to tank, I'm not sure the $700 billion bailout was a good idea. It seemed so rushed. And everyone was talking about how we needed to pass it immediately. Stephen Colbert had a great line the other night about the efficiency of making decisions in a panic. Now that it was rushed it HAS hurt Wall Street. I think there may be a lot of help needed here, but this plan didn't seem very well thought out. A pity we couldn't have just waited a little longer for a better one. Hopefully the economy will remain stable enough until we can get some other idea. That said, maybe the bailout was what would have saved us from another depression. Time will tell.
One of the things that I've seen from all of this that surprises me the most is the conservative backlash against the Federal Reserve. I'm a conservative, generally, so lately I've been getting a bunch of emails from friends about how evil the Fed is and how wrong they are. No one was complaining about the Fed when the economy was good. All they've ever done is try to keep the economy mostly normal while it cycles. People who work there know WAY more about this stuff than John Q. Public, but that hasn't seemed to stop a whole bunch of people that have never studied economics from decrying the Fed as an enemy to the economy. Good grief.
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Post by Hook on Sept 29, 2008 15:44:00 GMT -8
Who's to say that the bailout grants immunity? The bailout itself: That's a tad too much power to give to someone nobody elected. edit: I was originally referring to those who proposed the bailout. Which, by the way, comes off as 1.8 trillion dollars total of money the government hopes will be paid with interests. My question is: how are loaners going to pay for that? Is anyone talking about that?
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Post by Carlton the Barbarian on Sept 29, 2008 16:11:56 GMT -8
What is "worse than that?" What's going to happen? We're going to have to be smart again? Inventive? Have some ingenuity? Much of this is the result of the US slowly becoming nothing but a consumer. It's time the US goes back to what it USED to do when it was successful, and that's actually PRODUCING something that the rest of the world wants. How are we going to produce a dollar that the world would want, if the dollar keeps dropping? I think Jon's post has summed it up. The Fed (and Congress) were acting in order to slow down and avert the toppling of more and more banks. I think it's clear that the government can not stay idle. What the solution? I think the government will pass some bill. It's seems like a hands off "traditional" approach will have even more dire consequences... The DOW didn't drop 700 points immediately after the government helped out other financial institutions, so it's clear that government intervention was helping in some way. It did bring along some degree of confidence and stabilization. Okay, wasn't it 350 billion. I think they problem was that this bill was rushed. They were changes and compromises to the bill that were supposed to address concerns with mortgage relief and golden parachutes. I think another version of the bill will pass through Congress. Well, it we be interesting to see what happens next.
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Post by Carlton the Barbarian on Sept 29, 2008 16:16:12 GMT -8
Who's to say that the bailout grants immunity? The bailout itself: Whew, for a second there, I thought you read all 100+ pages.
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Post by Hook on Sept 29, 2008 16:23:10 GMT -8
Well, the proposal has 3 pages, and includes this (from CNN): Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
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cheno
Conductor
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Post by cheno on Sept 29, 2008 16:24:33 GMT -8
Well, that's open for debate. No, it's not. American history is littered with cases where Americans wouldn't change their lifestyles until they're absolutely forced to. Look at oil situation. We're not going to stop consuming all this oil until we've run out and we're forced to look at other methods. If we're only going to see a tax hike from this, we're not going to go into panic mode and we're not going to make the changes necessary to make sure this doesn't happen again. That's not really up for debate, Jon.
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Post by Jangles on Sept 29, 2008 16:30:23 GMT -8
Frankly, I'm tired of sitting in an office all day. I would rather be out and among the smoking ruins with my shotgun raging all the over place.
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MikeP
Orchestrator
Posts: 537
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Post by MikeP on Sept 29, 2008 16:45:12 GMT -8
Heh, look back to two years ago. High gas prices force many Americans to sell their gas guzzlers, and then come elections we see gas prices dip back. So what do Americans do? Sell the econoboxes they just purchased and replace them with a new truck/SUV.
Ugh.
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Post by muckle dabuckle on Sept 29, 2008 16:49:19 GMT -8
You've stated only your blinded feelings. Wow, you just don't understand, muckle. That isn't the point. It is just amazing to me that you would dare to say more Democrats should have voted for when Republicans voted 2-1 against the bill. Just amazing. Forget it, no point in talking to you about it. Wow. This coming from the threads fear-monger. Let's see. The democrats have had the majority in the senate and house for two years. They decide who is on every committee. They decide when they meet and when they don't. But, it's the republicans fault the bill didn't pass even though the democrat leadership couldn't get their own party to vote on this bill. To mean that means the bill was BS. They rushed through it so they could take the jewish holiday off even though they knew this morning they didn't have the votes. They went through with it anyway. It is 100% in the power of the democrats to NOT take the holiday off. They control the agenda. They could've met all day. They still could be meeting now. This issue has been talked about for a year, but no one did anything about it. Nothing during session. All of a sudden a month before election it's a crisis. Like I said I heard a representative that voted against it say the democrats only listened to "experts" with their political viewpoints and the republicans only listened to "experts" with their own viewpoints. There was nothing bipartisan about this thing for a second. And the bill would've had to pass in the exact same format in the Senate where the same thing probably would've happened. Now I'm sure some congressmen are sticking around Washington authoring a different version of this bill that maybe a majority could support. Sorry I'm not buying into this fear-monger BS because of one day. Wallstreet panics about everything. What this vote shows me is people are tired of throwing money into endless pits. Enough is never enough for the government. You "bail" them out with fake money now it will happen again. Every single american owes $32K to the national debt already and we're trying to add almost $1 trillion more. Then a few years down the road we will bail these same people out. Where do we get that money? Most likely my ass, which is where they thought they were getting the $700 billion. We spent all the money we had and we are supposed to be fixing it by spending more money we don't have. So with the bailout these places will keep lending people money until it's all gone again and people can't afford to repay it. Once the government's tentacles are in this they will never leave. It will cost a hell of a lot more than $700 billion. It's a lot easier for the market to fix itself than get the government off of your ass.
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Post by natedogg23 on Sept 29, 2008 16:52:10 GMT -8
Well this really took off since my last post....
As I stated before I am most definitely against the bailout bill as it has been presented thus far. Many of the reasons against the bill have already been stated including creating more debt, inflation and allowing the Treasury (Paulson) who is NOT ELECTED to make decisions without any stipulations, basically a blank check. Oh, and let us not forget that Paulson was over at Goldman Sachs for many years making millions of dollars and happened to relatively recently turn to public service as a profession, hmmmmm.....
I'm not going to sit here and state that I know everything, but what is funny is that most of this bailout centers around bad mortgages and many of the problems lead back to Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae. If you follow some of the history you will find that back under Clinton there were bills passed that basically said you need to lend money to people that shouldn't be able to get loans anyways, all in an effort to help people reach this propaganda called the "American Dream". Additionally, manipulation of interest rates by Greenspan (just one of many reasons to abolish the monopoly known at the Fed) made credit way too easy to get. So all this money was lent out with the idea was that prices would go up forever, which we know isn't how things work and now the US is having to face the consequences of over consumption. Let me state that I place blame on both democrats and republicans, there is plenty of blame to go around and frankly the blame game gets old. Who cares what party someone is associated with, it is more important to looks at the cause of the problems and figure out the best solution to fix the problem.
The bailout that has been discussed thus far is disasterous because it just prolongs the economic consequences of decisions already made in the market. Throwing more and more money at a problem isn't a very good way of solving a problem. Market corrections need to occur, prices need to decline.
I'm still undecided as to if a bailout plan should be passed at all (one that is radically different than the current proposal and has limited government intervention) or if the markets should be allowed to sort it all out, but I am still leaning towards letting the market sort stuff out. Frankly I don't trust the government and moving towards more socialism is scary and not what I want to see. Regardless times will be tough no matter what happens, but we shall continue to have film scores to enjoy.....
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Post by Jangles on Sept 29, 2008 16:56:11 GMT -8
Well, I'm glad this recession has no affect whatsoever where I live. Lawlz.
One thing I find funny is that people are citing some of the EXACT same reasons for their argument either for or against the bailout. Which one is actually going to cause inflation? Also, I really don't get the argument that people will have to wise up and be more responsible in the future and how letting the banks fail will be part of the learning process. What is this, the world economy or a 5 year old child we are talking about? Get real people - this isn't Oprah.
And fuck Ron Paul. All he does it talk and think he is so much better, which is why he isn't in the running for President. He also has a drone of followers who thinks he is the godsend. No one cares about him or his liberty campaign except for people in their 20's on the internet.
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