Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

creedence rules haters

srsly

creedence are invincible

Me too Morbs.. then I wouldn't have to miss all the west coast games, which will start at approx. 2am GMT

BST

oh WHATEVER

SNAP

if you don't like creedence, you don't like america, this thread is about the US Economy, i.e. America=stfu

xp p.s. i am coming on your show, you know this, right?

I'm still unconvinced that Congress needs to do something about this. And why is there such a rush to do something? If Americans aren't soundly behind this, as I gather from polls and from what congresspeople are saying (Dems and Republicans), then doesn't this favor inaction while a better case is made for intervention?

Regardless of whether this plan is the correct answer or not, this reasoning makes no sense. The approval of the American people has no bearing on whether action needs to be taken to avert a financial crisis.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Ooh! "No Money No Honey"!

roubini proposed some alternatives to the bailout plan

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253783/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

One J. Goldberg huffs and puffs and then curiously adds:

I loathe populism.

Guess all the Simpsons talk was just a put-on.

The approval of the American people has no bearing on whether action needs to be taken to avert a financial crisis.

Congresspeople represent the American people. If the approval of the American people has no bearing on the decisions of congresspeople, then those congresspeople do not represent the American people. Hence the approval of the American people should bear on the decisions of congresspeople.

Is "Congresspeople" a word?

its got those women-americans in them now

The approval of the American people has no bearing on whether action needs to be taken to avert a financial crisis.

I understand what you're saying, Dan, but this is dangerously close in sentiment to Dick Cheney's "Who cares what the fuckin' polls say?"

caek yes! we still have to decide what story we're going to saddle you with, though. sadly there is not anything else in the lineup with quite the same amount of astrophysics as "pail of air" but we will try.

Congresspeople represent the American people. If the approval of the American people has no bearing on the decisions of congresspeople, then those congresspeople do not represent the American people. Hence the approval of the American people should bear on the decisions of congresspeople.

I understand what you're saying, Dan, but this is dangerously close in sentiment to Dick Cheney's "Who cares what the fuckin' polls say?"

Okay guys: what should we do then, to avert the crisis? Got any ideas?

xp rad.

What I don't get about Jonah Goldberg's column up there is that he criticizes Frank and other Democrats for refusing to give into -McCain's demands- to regulate Fannie Mae and other institutions (and thus save America) ... but then he gives backhanded praise to the Republicans for finally sticking to hands-off free-market ideology. What??

Oh bah. I'll out-Cheney Cheney on this one then: all the people who are busily calling their congressfolk to complain about a "bailout for the wall street fat cats" have no fucking clue what's happening here.

And don't give me that "teh peple is smartier than u think elits!" stuff. No Fucking Clue - those same folks who are lighting up the phones benefited from the bubble and not only encouraged wall street's excesses but demanded them.

we have a republic folks, not a "democracy"

I love the tone of some of the bank ads you can see these days:

http://m1.2mdn.net/1782910/LAT_IO56888_Pacific_Premier_Bank.gif

There's an assumption being made here that the American public is as well-informed about these issues as the elected officials currently dealing with them that's being completely hand-waved here. If I believed that this were in any way, shape or form true and I had even the slightest ounce of faith in the American public's ability to deal with a financial crisis and I thought that entire story with all of its gory details was being disseminated and understood by the American public, I would be less dismissive of your position.

xp or basically what Roger said, only really I think we're completely fucked because these same idiots elected the current Congress and half of them can't seem to tie their shoes without an aide's help

If the approval of the American people has no bearing on the decisions of congresspeople, then those congresspeople do not represent the American people.

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." - Edmund Burke

That said, fuck the bailout.

You know, I haven't seen any of those annoying WaMu ads lately. What's up with that?

Maybe the present bailout is the best course for the country, but we are talking a lot of money here and so it's understandable that people would be reluctant to approve of spending it (never mind the fact that so many voted for Bush in 2004 when they should have said the same thing about the cost of the wars). So convince people that they should support it, George Bush or whoever supports this plan. Don't just try to scare us; you did the same thing with Iraq and look where that got us. Show us why this is a good thing to do, not just a gamble but a plan with a likelihood of success. And if it's not, keep working on this. That's why we pay you the big bucks.

leave it to those pointy headed egg jheads in new york and washington to screw us regular folk again. we should just secede from the east coast! yeah!

There's an assumption being made here that the American public is as well-informed about these issues as the elected officials currently dealing with them that's being completely hand-waved here.

When I think about some of the jacktards currently serving in Congress, that doesn't fill me with confidence.

The closest thing I've seen to an explanation that makes sense to do something soon has been stuff like this:

But there's a more immediate danger: To an extent little appreciated by most Americans, businesses today no longer pay for their day-to-day operations with their own money but do so with borrowed funds.

Making next week's payroll or buying the supplies workers need to do their jobs tomorrow depend on loans. Without those loans, companies and the economy as a whole begin to grind to a halt.

I admit this was news to me; at the same time the sheer impracticality of this approach on the face of it makes me wonder why the heck it came about in the first place.

Morbs quoting Burke?!

I knew the quote but wasn't sure who said it.

What do we think of Reich's prediction?

Just a little friendly ragging, cher Docteur. It was just a little unexpected to see our resident old-school liberal quoting the 'father of conservatism'.

Don't just try to scare us; you did the same thing with Iraq and look where that got us

This is why all the talk about "this will ruin the economy/great depression 2" is suspect, when they aren't telling us why it will, or if it will work, or even an estimate of how much money they need. It's scare tactics; the only reason I (and im sure most people) would even think of supporting the bailout is that it will save the economy, which is an idea entirely put across by the very people that will be able to handle this $700 billion dollars in the first place.

It's like what Lenin said... you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh...

Why on earth can't these banks provide solid numbers? I was under the impression that most of the banking industry was people keeping tracks of numbers. Is there honestly no database list of these debts? I say fuck them especially if they aren't going to provide solid figures.

posner in government ownership stake shocker

it's because the whole industry is so crooked that to show real numbers would = heads on spears at the tower gates

xp

Greenwald:

Can anyone even remember the last time this happened, where the nation's corporate interests and their establishment spokespeople were insistently demanding government action but were impeded -- defeated -- by nothing more than popular opinion? Perhaps the failure of George Bush's Social Security schemes in 2005 would be an example, but one is hard-pressed to think of any other meaningful ones. We're a "democracy" in which nothing is less important in how our government functions than public opinion. Yesterday was an exceedingly rare though intense departure from that framework -- the kind of citizen defiance of, an "uprising" against, a rotted ruling elite described by David Sirota in his book, "Uprising." On the citizenry level, the backlash was defined not by "Republican v. Democrat" or "Left v. Right," but by "people v. ruling class." As Johnston argues, yesterday's events should be celebrated for that reason alone.

It's true that we don't live in a direct democracy where every last decision by elected officials must conform to majoritarian desire, nor should we want that. In general, elected officials should exercise judgment independent of -- in ways that deviate from -- majority views. But the opposite extreme is what we have and it is just as bad -- a system where the actions of elected officials are dictated by a tiny cabal of self-interested oligarchs which fund, control and own the branches of government and willfully ignore majority opinion in all cases (except to manipulate it).
Moreover, even in a model of representative rather than direct democracy, the more consequential an action is -- should we start a war? should we burden the entire nation with close to a trillion dollars in debt in order to bail out Wall Street? -- the greater the need is to have the consent of the governed before undertaking it. From all quarters, Americans heard the arguments in favor of the bailout -- "agree to have this debt piled on your back for decades or else face certain doom" -- and they rejected it, decisively, at least for now.

mbs are difficult to value in the face of massive non performance- its not only becz they dont want to show us their stupid shitty pile of mortgages

cds are just completely untracked, no one even knows how many are out there from what ive read and heard

xpst

thats credit default swaps not deposits

Why on earth can't these banks provide solid numbers? I was under the impression that most of the banking industry was people keeping tracks of numbers. Is there honestly no database list of these debts? I say fuck them especially if they aren't going to provide solid figures.

facepalm

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE BAD DEBTS IS WORTH

This is why all the talk about "this will ruin the economy/great depression 2" is suspect, when they aren't telling us why it will, or if it will work, or even an estimate of how much money they need. It's scare tactics; the only reason I (and im sure most people) would even think of supporting the bailout is that it will save the economy, which is an idea entirely put across by the very people that will be able to handle this $700 billion dollars in the first place.

Are they not telling us why it will? They are saying the credit markets are tightened beyond belief; add to that, consumer panic leading to runs on banks that is destabilizing them (which is what happened with WaMu over the past two weeks). The worst case scenario for this is pretty bad.

b/c that's dependent on who will default

which we don't know... we just know which tranches the likely defaulters is in

^^ oops xp

I would get behind that Greenwald excerpt more if this had been defeated by referendum.

this day in history: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

but I guess thank u Adam for basically making my point - to "explain" this to Murrcans starts with a primer on monetary policy and derivativess, which, you know, good luck with that, because even most college-educated Murrcans just glaze over and don't get it. And this shit wasn't primer-level derivatives.

most people who deal in these shits professionally dont get it