Bailing out the banks

No expert but I thought this was a no brainer (possibly why Bush got it). So, whats the view stateside? Is it correct that quite a few don't want to be seen as socialists by interfering in the market?

Yes, the Repugnicans who voted against it are free market ideologues who believe that the bailout puts the U.S. on the road to socialism. Better to destroy the U.S. economy, and with it, the global economy, than to accept any role for government (aside, of course, from tax cuts for the wealthy).

Jeffari-al-Texani wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: Yes, the Repugnicans who voted against it are free market ideologues who believe that the bailout puts the U.S. on the road to socialism. Better to destroy the U.S. economy, and with it, the global economy, than to accept any role for government (aside, of course, from tax cuts for the wealthy).

What about the 95 dumbocrats that voted this thing down? Plenty of blame to go around here.

Most Democrats voted for the bailout. Most Repugnicans voted against it. The Repugnican leadership utterly failed at it's one job-- leadership-- in bringing enough Repug votes to the table to get it passed.

Basic maths.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

Jeffari-al-Texani wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: Yes, the Repugnicans who voted against it are free market ideologues who believe that the bailout puts the U.S. on the road to socialism. Better to destroy the U.S. economy, and with it, the global economy, than to accept any role for government (aside, of course, from tax cuts for the wealthy).

What about the 95 dumbocrats that voted this thing down? Plenty of blame to go around here.

Most Democrats voted for the bailout. Most Repugnicans voted against it. The Repugnican leadership utterly failed at it's one job-- leadership-- in bringing enough Repug votes to the table to get it passed.

Basic maths.

It's a shame cos it was just about the most sensible thing I remember Dubya ever proposing.

Yes, 23 (basic maths) more Democrats would have got it passed. If Pelosi had been successful in getting those 23 votes, it still would have been without Repugnican leadership...which plays right into the Repug game plan of blaming the Dems for the bailout.

Jeffari-al-Texani wrote:

Burt Reynolds wrote:

It's a shame cos it was just about the most sensible thing I remember Dubya ever proposing.

Dumbya wouldn't be smart enough to come up with a plan like this. Just another example of somebody else pulling the strings on this puppet.

It was Bernanke who came up with the plan, and sold it to Paulson. The two of them sold it to Dumbya.

Jeffari-al-Texani wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: Yes, 23 (basic maths) more Democrats would have got it passed. If Pelosi had been successful in getting those 23 votes, it still would have been without Repugnican leadership...which plays right into the Repug game plan of blaming the Dems for the bailout.

You talk about basic maths, but you can't figure out that only 13 more yes votes would have won this one, not 23.

Yep, my mistake.

Jeffari-al-Texani wrote: The dumbocrats could have passed this one all on their own if they were THAT interested in doing so.

I'll leave you to go figure out addition and subtraction. When you get those basic skills down, then I might be interested in your opinion on why this bill didn't pass.

You can't possibly imagine that I really care what you're interested in.

Chalk it up as another Republican fantasy: Saddam had WMDs. Deregulation works. The economy is strong. The Democrats killed the bailout....

All empires eventually fall. Thanks Ronald and Karl.

Life in America over the past few years has felt like being in a huge fuck fest, with middle class tax paying, working folk being the unfortunate non-willing receivers.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: Chalk it up as another Republican fantasy: Saddam had WMDs. Deregulation works. The economy is strong. The Democrats killed the bailout....

ummmm... I PERSONALLY saw WMDs in Iraq that belonged to Saddam...

Actually the issue that we have comes from government regulation on mortgauges... so deregulation could have possibly saved us...

...and before you throw all Republicans in one boat, it is the House Republicans (which tend to be more far-right-leaning) that didn't go for it, while the Senate Republicans did...

...the plan has alot of holes in it that has both interests (dems and reps) very concerned. Its how this effects our economic future that concerns everyone. This isn't just throwing money at something, its changing the ideals that the US has been built upon... ideals many Reps and Dems hold dear. The question isn't if we should do the bail out that is stopping this thing, its more how do we handle future bailouts and corporate failures.... this could lead to a financial blackhole....

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: Chalk it up as another Republican fantasy: Saddam had WMDs. Deregulation works. The economy is strong. The Democrats killed the bailout....

ummmm... I PERSONALLY saw WMDs in Iraq that belonged to Saddam...

Too bad you never reported them. Because the world was told we never found them. Could've saved W from looking like a liar.

EdelBrock wrote: Actually the issue that we have comes from government regulation on mortgauges... so deregulation could have possibly saved us...

No, the "issue" is an unregulated sector of the financial markets, and the efforts of John McCain and other deregulators to keep that sector unregulated.

EdelBrock wrote: ...and before you throw all Republicans in one boat, it is the House Republicans (which tend to be more far-right-leaning) that didn't go for it, while the Senate Republicans did...

It's been postulated several times in the last week that the House Repugs are working hand-in-hand with john McCain to save his candidacy. You know, "Country First" and all that.

EdelBrock wrote: ...the plan has alot of holes in it that has both interests (dems and reps) very concerned. Its how this effects our economic future that concerns everyone. This isn't just throwing money at something, its changing the ideals that the US has been built upon... ideals many Reps and Dems hold dear. The question isn't if we should do the bail out that is stopping this thing, its more how do we handle future bailouts and corporate failures.... this could lead to a financial blackhole....

It's not that throwing $700 billion at Wall Street is something we should all be happy to do-- it's that ushering in a world-wide depression is a much, much worse course of action.

All that aside, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anything about free markets in the founding documents of this nation. Those "ideals" reflect the values of contemporary extreme right ideologues, rather than those of the founding fathers, or even those of Adam Smith.

On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time... I have NO idea why noone brings them up.... possibly because they were left over from the Iran-Iraq War and not new?

The whole issue was started by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, which caused lending institutions to fail, as are insurance companies... so it IS controlled by regulation problems. Yes the institutions in question aren't regulated themselves, but the regulated market of mortguages is what caused the domino effect....

And you are completely wrong as it is the one of the founding cornerstones. US idealogy is based on Lockean Liberalism which bases the idea that if man is given personal property with little to no regulation, that he will take care of it and prosper more than if it were regulated.

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time... I have NO idea why noone brings them up.... possibly because they were left over from the Iran-Iraq War and not new?

The weapons the U.S. sold to Iraq in the first place?

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

I guess I'm a fucking liar? I would just say shit to make myself look good? With a reply like that, you can find the posts yerself. Its actually pretty easy to do:

Go to Google and type in "Mustard Sarin Gas"... you don't even have to put in Iraq, but it works better if you do....

Also, I was almost hit by a sarin mortar from insurgents and had to put a tournequette on a wounded Marine's leg from it... my medical report shows all the medicine I had to take because they feared I had exposure to the shit...

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

I guess I'm a fucking liar? I would just say shit to make myself look good? With a reply like that, you can find the posts yerself.

You made the claim about WMDs being reported in the news. Why should I do your research?

CIA's Final Report: NO WMD Found In Iraq

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

I guess I'm a fucking liar? I would just say shit to make myself look good? With a reply like that, you can find the posts yerself.

You made the claim about WMDs being reported in the news. Why should I do your research?

Cause its monkey work, Fuck off

WMD theories in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War.

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

I guess I'm a fucking liar? I would just say shit to make myself look good? With a reply like that, you can find the posts yerself.

You made the claim about WMDs being reported in the news. Why should I do your research?

Cause its monkey work, Fuck off

Translation: I can make any wild claim, in complete contradiction of all published reports, and if anybody doubts me, THEY can do the research to prove me wrong.

Three things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. I don't appreciate being called a liar

3. Get off this crap and get back on subject

Ermm, I could be wrong but aren't Mustard Gas and Sarin different agents?

Mustard Gas was used in WW1 in the trenches, and Sarin was infamously used on the Tokyo underground a few years back. Without attempting to google, I always understood both are debilitating nerve agents, as used by Saddam on his own people in the eighties.

A weapon of mass destruction, though? Perhaps in his own country.

But surely not a 45 minute threat to the West, without an undiscovered delivery system.

EdelBrock wrote: Two things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. Get off this crap and get back on subject

You still don't get it.

(1) When you make an argument, it is your responsibility to provide support for your own argument. It is not the responsibility of the people you are making your argument to.

(2) You are the one who got on this crap, and now that it;s going badly for you, you would understandably like to get back on the subject.

:topic:

Burt Reynolds wrote: Ermm, I could be wrong but aren't Mustard Gas and Sarin different agents?

Mustard Gas was used in WW1 in the trenches, and Sarin was infamously used on the Tokyo underground a few years back. Without attempting to google, I always understood both are debilitating nerve agents, as used by Saddam on his own people in the eighties.

A weapon of mass destruction, though?

Surely not, without a delivery system.

I hadn't heard of the discovery of these weapons until i just googled them. Chemical agents were found, but:

The Washington Post reported that "the U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active." It said the shells "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988."

I don't know about everybody else, but I hardly think that when George Bush got us to invade Iraq on the basis of Saddam's ongoing WMD program, that we all understood it to mean 500 ancient shells containing an inactive blister agent.

Burt Reynolds wrote: :topic:

Yep, agreed.

Back on topic: Chalk this up to another Republican fantasy-- Saddam had WMDs, deregulation works, the economy is strong, and the Democrats killed the bailout.

Burt Reynolds wrote: Ermm, I could be wrong but aren't Mustard Gas and Sarin different agents?

Mustard Gas was used in WW1 in the trenches, and Sarin was infamously used on the Tokyo underground a few years back. Without attempting to google, I always understood both are debilitating nerve agents, as used by Saddam on his own people in the eighties.

A weapon of mass destruction, though?

Surely not, without a delivery system.

I suppose the definition of a "WMD" is rather subjective. Did this definition exist before Bush declared that Saddam had them? The Reagan and Bush 1 administration didn't mind at all that Saddam had weapons when he was using them against Shiites and Kurds... that was why the US supported Saddam, to keep the Shiites and Kurds under his Sunni heel.

As for the bill, I was surprised that it failed. I thought they had made a lot of good bipartisan changes.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: Two things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. Get off this crap and get back on subject

You still don't get it.

(1) When you make an argument, it is your responsibility to provide support for your own argument. It is not the responsibility of the people you are making your argument to.

(2) You are the one who got on this crap, and now that it;s going badly for you, you would understandably like to get back on the subject.

I think you are forgetting the normal ettiquette of not calling the person an outright liar rather than asking what they are going on about... cause you can look like an ass afterwards... its a simple google search, too hard for you to do? It doesn't take any hard research, there are tons of articles on it... and since ywer too damn lazy here's a few I'm randomly picking off the FIRST page of hits off of google...

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1551580,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33082-2004May17.html

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/17/ldt.00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83449,00.html

But it wasn't about this, yer just doing a smoke and cover cause yer talk on the finacial crisis was screwed up and you wanted to draw attention away from it.

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: Two things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. Get off this crap and get back on subject

You still don't get it.

(1) When you make an argument, it is your responsibility to provide support for your own argument. It is not the responsibility of the people you are making your argument to.

(2) You are the one who got on this crap, and now that it;s going badly for you, you would understandably like to get back on the subject.

I think you are forgetting the normal ettiquette of not calling the person an outright liar rather than asking what they are going on about... cause you can look like an ass afterwards... its a simple google search, too hard for you to do?

If you say you saw Sarin shells, that's fine. If you say the media reported that WMD were found, I say that never hapened, and you need to back it up. Once again, you don't seem to get how these things work.

So here's how it works:

You say the media reported WMD were found. Nobody else saw those reports, and one or more persons say so. It's not incumbent upon me to prove you wrong (although I retain that right)-- it's up to you to provide documentation that the media did report that WMD were found. Just like in college. You write a paper, you state your thesis. The next step is evidence to support your thesis-- and that evidence needs to be more than an unsupported assertion accompanied with an admonition to "google it yourself, professor."

EdelBrock wrote: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1551580,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33082-2004May17.html

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/17/ldt.00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83449,00.html

Old news.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: CIA's Final Report: NO WMD Found In Iraq

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: WMD theories in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: The Washington Post reported that "the U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active." It said the shells "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988."

I don't know about everybody else, but I hardly think that when George Bush got us to invade Iraq on the basis of Saddam's ongoing WMD program, that we all understood it to mean 500 ancient shells containing an inactive blister agent.

EdelBrock wrote: But it wasn't about this, yer just doing a smoke and cover cause yer talk on the finacial crisis was screwed up and you wanted to draw attention away from it.

Oh? Which part? Oh, wait-- I know! You want me to google support for your argument myself...

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: Two things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. Get off this crap and get back on subject

You still don't get it.

(1) When you make an argument, it is your responsibility to provide support for your own argument. It is not the responsibility of the people you are making your argument to.

(2) You are the one who got on this crap, and now that it;s going badly for you, you would understandably like to get back on the subject.

I think you are forgetting the normal ettiquette of not calling the person an outright liar rather than asking what they are going on about... cause you can look like an ass afterwards... its a simple google search, too hard for you to do?

If you say you saw Sarin shells, that's fine. If you say the media reported that WMD were found, I say that never hapened, and you need to back it up. Once again, you don't seem to get how these things work.

So here's how it works:

You say the media reported WMD were found. Nobody else saw those reports, and one or more persons say so. It's not incumbent upon me to prove you wrong (although I retain that right)-- it's up to you to provide documentation that the media did report that WMD were found. Just like in college. You write a paper, you state your thesis. The next step is evidence to support your thesis-- and that evidence needs to be more than an unsupported assertion accompanied with an admonition to "google it yourself, professor."

Go back and read what you wrote. the reply would have been different if you didn't call me an outright liar... you could say the same thing without doing so...

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: Two things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

2. Get off this crap and get back on subject

You still don't get it.

(1) When you make an argument, it is your responsibility to provide support for your own argument. It is not the responsibility of the people you are making your argument to.

(2) You are the one who got on this crap, and now that it;s going badly for you, you would understandably like to get back on the subject.

I think you are forgetting the normal ettiquette of not calling the person an outright liar rather than asking what they are going on about... cause you can look like an ass afterwards... its a simple google search, too hard for you to do?

If you say you saw Sarin shells, that's fine. If you say the media reported that WMD were found, I say that never hapened, and you need to back it up. Once again, you don't seem to get how these things work.

So here's how it works:

You say the media reported WMD were found. Nobody else saw those reports, and one or more persons say so. It's not incumbent upon me to prove you wrong (although I retain that right)-- it's up to you to provide documentation that the media did report that WMD were found. Just like in college. You write a paper, you state your thesis. The next step is evidence to support your thesis-- and that evidence needs to be more than an unsupported assertion accompanied with an admonition to "google it yourself, professor."

Go back and read what you wrote. the reply would have been different if you didn't call me an outright liar... you could say the same thing without doing so...

I didn't call you an outright liar:

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: On the WMDs, they were reported, and I have pictures though I can't post them for obvious reasons. They made the news, but it made little impact at the time....

No, they were never reported and never made the news. Probably because they never existed.

Feel free to come up with some concrete evidence that I'm wrong about the news.

I said quite emphatically that you are wrong-- dead wrong-- about the media reporting the discovery of WMD in Iraq. I still say it, even with those links you provided. That's not calling you an outright liar. The world wasn't stampeded into war over a few cases of expired mustard gas shells. What was presented as a rationale for war was never found.

Jeesh, Marines. Who knew they could be so sensitive?

Fuck off if your can't see your insult. Your words didn't say you thought I was wrong, instead you flat out called me a liar.

You mentioned NO WMDs WERE FOUND... but mustard and sarin gas is used for chemical warfare, and is listed under the definition of WMD.

I didn't state if it were just cause or not, or that it backed Bush's claims to push for the war or not. I'm not making any political justifications or accusations.

The only thing I am stating is that "no WMDs were found in Iraq" in not a true statement.

but that's the end, this thread has gotten off topic

EdelBrock wrote: Fuck off if your can't see your insult. Your words didn't say you thought I was wrong, instead you flat out called me a liar.

No, I'm saying that the media never reported WMD being found. In fact, the media has consistently reported the opposite, including the report, which I linked to, made a year or so after your links, that the CIA concluded that no WMD were found.

I'm saying you are wrong. You seem to prefer to hear "You're a liar." They're not the same thing at all, but you're the one who's going to have to figure that one out.

I'm no economic expert, but here is what makes me mad: the world media outside the US, that Grenspen bloke have been reporting that US economy is getting worse for a year or so. My dad in St. Petersburg kept asking me about the economy for a year. But here we have been told: no recession, the economy is, fuck my arse, healthy. Dollar is weak - but it's good for our exports, right? Then what the fuck, why all this crisis all of a sudden? Damn those Washington wankers who want now us to pay.

Actions to implement:

1. Expropriate the Rod Island mansions and bank deposits of the responsible politicians and do whatever is needed to save the economy because US economy is the cornerstone of the world economy, you'd better not fuck with it!

2. Create an Extraordinary Economic Council with leading economic experts and instituts and have their solutions being widely discuessed, instead of the Congress chitchat in freemasonic secret chambers.

3. Create a new plan for economic development - yes like in a fucking African country - for the next decades, similar in vision as was the New Deal.

i'd vote to get rid of all the fuckers in conngress,senate, including the president, get rid of all the republicans,dmocrats,conservatives,independents,and liberals and any other jackoff that resides in the white house with a job that is helping frell things up. get rid of all the bastards and start the slate clean. so many frellers under the sun with their greasy hands into everything no wonder this is all going under. yeah im sure it doesnt work that way but do you see them getting anywhere?

close the fukcing southern and northern borders. no in and out planes for a whle. stop writing checks to other countries, stop the shit wars, stop getting it up the ass from achkmidinejad,let kim jong il kill himself and his own country, drill on our own land, put big ass weapons on each coast and fire at any b.s. invaders...blah blah blah blah blah

let michael savage scream at them over the airwaves while they are headed for another building in a plane under a democratic ass digging president because an old wheelchair bound fart refug isn't going to do anything for the country either. big oil. big cocks. big money(not so big anymore at what 41cents to someone elses peso,whateever). for a guy hiding in a cave, does anyone think osama wanks off any. with all that stress of hiding his fat ass from the rest of the world '

EdelBrock wrote: Three things:

1. How about you just put into Google the shit I mentioned

google sucks

2. I don't appreciate being called a liar

liar liar your butt flap is on fire

3. Get off this crap and get back on subject

lot of that to go around.

Get a room.

im in a room. care to join?

Nonethefuckingless GET BACK ON TOPIC.

Personally, I was also surprised the bill ended in FAIL.

The fact that the bill got turned down surprises me totally yet doesnt surprise me at all.

The way i look at it, these banks let the likes of me lend money out willy nilly to people who were quite happy to lie about the income. Take Lehmann borther for example, they has three sub prime mortgage outlets in this country Southern pacific, Preferred and London Mortgage Company. None of these lenders ever asked for proof of income, or even proof of (self) employment. As a brokerage, we could pretty much do what we wanted, and we did. Now, some might say we were reckless in this, but I disagree. Lehmann Brothers, through the associated companies employed people to sell us their products and were positively encouraged to supply these products to people who couldnt really afford them. People arent stupid though, and most of the time, we were consolidating a lot of debt, and actually saving (at least in the first two or three years) the people a lot of money. So a lot of the problem is a lot of unsecured debt has become secured debt. And the likes of Lehmann Brothers just did not care.

Ultimately if Banks have been reckless, then they should collapse, end of story. If they can be sold on, fine. But the taxpayer should only guarantee deposits and savings (and only up to a limit. And only because its pretty much compulsory for wages to be paid directly into a bank these days). Shareholders should be basically told go to go fuck themselves. I have laughed my arse off this week with the shareholders in bradford and bingley ringing into five live and bitching about how their shares have plummetted in value. Do they not understand thats the nature of the game?

I was going to invest my student Grant (after i've paid Tim off, obviously) in WWE shares (although i'm not going to until after the latest court case is settled). But could you imagine WWE stock collapsing dramatically and then me coming on the board and bitching about it? Its the nature of the beast, you invest in something, and that can go up immesurably, it can go down, or it can vanish. thats the risk. And if it fucks up in your face, then there isnt anybody responsible for that except the person who made the investment, and the company which has cuased it. It isnt up to the taxpayer to bail anyone one out of anything. No one forced anyone to invest in stocks, shares etc.

I put £25 on a horse a few weeks ago and it came last.

Will George Bush be sending me a cheque to cover my loss?

El Jarvo wrote:

Uncle Liam wrote: The way i look at it, these banks let the likes of me lend money out willy nilly to people who were quite happy to lie about the income. Take Lehmann borther for example, they has three sub prime mortgage outlets in this country Southern pacific, Preferred and London Mortgage Company. None of these lenders ever asked for proof of income, or even proof of (self) employment. As a brokerage, we could pretty much do what we wanted, and we did. Now, some might say we were reckless in this, but I disagree. Lehmann Brothers, through the associated companies employed people to sell us their products and were positively encouraged to supply these products to people who couldnt really afford them. People arent stupid though, and most of the time, we were consolidating a lot of debt, and actually saving (at least in the first two or three years) the people a lot of money. So a lot of the problem is a lot of unsecured debt has become secured debt. And the likes of Lehmann Brothers just did not care.

Slightly simplistic view of the situation, Liam, but largely there. Lehmans didn't go bust because of its mortgages, it went bust simply because no other bank was prepared to trade with it. 'Confidence' plays a huge part in the Financial Markets and no one wanted to play ball with Lehmans anymore. When it filed for bankruptcy 80% of its assets were still good, it was the other 20% which people feared exposure to. Yes, these were the mortgage issues you refer to, but they alone weren't enough to topple a bank of its size. Not being able to trade with other banks though, that was its undoing.

The American government could've bailed it out fairly easily, but Lehmans have no genuine high street presence, so they were allowed to die a natural death cos they have no link with the common man. Same can't be said for Bradford & Bingley. It's not simply a case of people having shares in such a company, the prime benefactors are the hundreds of thousands of people who have mortgages tied up in such an organisation.

I'm surprised at just how flippant the American government have been on these issues, or seemingly - which is far scarier - the fact that these politicians are supposedly opposing this bill on behalf of their constituents. This isn't about bailing out some Patrick Bateman-type Wall Street Trader who doesn't now know where his next speedboat is coming from. It's about supporting the cornerstones of the Financial Markets as we know them. If there's no injection of funds from somewhere soon the fall-out will effect absolutely everyone. There'll be no credit, no loans, no mortgages. Poor returns on investments, on stocks, on pension funds. Plenty of companies will go to the wall as a result of the lack of credit, etc, etc. The rammifications will be enormous.

Let's just hope someone does summat, and soon.

Else it's beans-on-toast Britain for the forseeable future.

And I'm more of a spaghetti hoops man. :(

I presume the House of Representatives is being flippant because there is an election coming up. Have to be seen to be making a stand and all that...

How come there's so many people Stateside who totally discredit theories of human evolution but somehow Social Darwinism - the logical endpoint of free market ideology - is hunky dory??

Er, even when it doesn't fucking work.

El Jarvo wrote:

Uncle Liam wrote: The way i look at it, these banks let the likes of me lend money out willy nilly to people who were quite happy to lie about the income. Take Lehmann borther for example, they has three sub prime mortgage outlets in this country Southern pacific, Preferred and London Mortgage Company. None of these lenders ever asked for proof of income, or even proof of (self) employment. As a brokerage, we could pretty much do what we wanted, and we did. Now, some might say we were reckless in this, but I disagree. Lehmann Brothers, through the associated companies employed people to sell us their products and were positively encouraged to supply these products to people who couldnt really afford them. People arent stupid though, and most of the time, we were consolidating a lot of debt, and actually saving (at least in the first two or three years) the people a lot of money. So a lot of the problem is a lot of unsecured debt has become secured debt. And the likes of Lehmann Brothers just did not care.

Slightly simplistic view of the situation, Liam, but largely there. Lehmans didn't go bust because of its mortgages, it went bust simply because no other bank was prepared to trade with it. 'Confidence' plays a huge part in the Financial Markets and no one wanted to play ball with Lehmans anymore. When it filed for bankruptcy 80% of its assets were still good, it was the other 20% which people feared exposure to. Yes, these were the mortgage issues you refer to, but they alone weren't enough to topple a bank of its size. Not being able to trade with other banks though, that was its undoing.

The American government could've bailed it out fairly easily, but Lehmans have no genuine high street presence, so they were allowed to die a natural death cos they have no link with the common man. Same can't be said for Bradford & Bingley. It's not simply a case of people having shares in such a company, the prime benefactors are the hundreds of thousands of people who have mortgages tied up in such an organisation.

I'm surprised at just how flippant the American government have been on these issues, or seemingly - which is far scarier - the fact that these politicians are supposedly opposing this bill on behalf of their constituents. This isn't about bailing out some Patrick Bateman-type Wall Street Trader who doesn't now know where his next speedboat is coming from. It's about supporting the cornerstones of the Financial Markets as we know them. If there's no injection of funds from somewhere soon the fall-out will effect absolutely everyone. There'll be no credit, no loans, no mortgages. Poor returns on investments, on stocks, on pension funds. Plenty of companies will go to the wall as a result of the lack of credit, etc, etc. The rammifications will be enormous.

Let's just hope someone does summat, and soon.

Else it's beans-on-toast Britain for the forseeable future.

And I'm more of a spaghetti hoops man. :(

What will I do without my Veuve Clicquot?

Help out the people, let the rotten banks fall and new ones will rise.

This crap out situation has been in the pending tray for years as well the global economists know it.

700bn FFFS!!! America was shoe gazing over global poverty yet suddenly it can rustle up almost a TRILLION DOLLARS????

:vomit: