World Markets Nosedive, Emergency Meeting Called By Thai Finance Minister

[lannarebirth]

During times of economic madness, the mad anti-semites come out of the closet. The emergency rescue plan that is now openly supported by Bush, McCain, AND Obama is needed to prevent a worldwide depression and also to prevent hateful thinkers like we have seen here gaining power, as they tend to do during desperate times.

This is the same Bush who said a few months ago that the US economy was strong and that talk of a depression was conspiracy theory. Now you want to trust him with a 'bailout plan' that is just an issuance of credit and will lead to the further devaluation of the dollar. You don't get out of debt by going further into debt.

Even Bush is right once in a blue moon . In this case, his position comes from listening to the treasury secretary and the fed chairman anyway. I think he is right on this one. This isn't right now about who is to blame, there is more than enough blame to go all around anyway. This is an emergency and I am confident the rescue plan will pass in some form as all the US political leaders want it of both parties and all responsible financial experts want it as well. The "man on the street" still thinks this is a bailout for rich wall street fat cats, when actually this about saving their job, their home values, their retirement, etc. 60 percent of Americans are investors, and in my view, that is a good thing. It also matters to Thailand and the world, because if the US melts down, Americans stop shopping.

If the stock market is below levels it should be trading at. Shouldn't you and the other 59% of investors be in there buying it up with both hands? Or is itpossible the markets are not priced properly for the risks that are inherent in stock ownership? If they asked for 2 Trillion and you thought it would make your stocks go back up, would that be OK too?

[VegasVic]

During times of economic madness, the mad anti-semites come out of the closet. The emergency rescue plan that is now openly supported by Bush, McCain, AND Obama is needed to prevent a worldwide depression and also to prevent hateful thinkers like we have seen here gaining power, as they tend to do during desperate times.

This is the same Bush who said a few months ago that the US economy was strong and that talk of a depression was conspiracy theory. Now you want to trust him with a 'bailout plan' that is just an issuance of credit and will lead to the further devaluation of the dollar. You don't get out of debt by going further into debt.

Even Bush is right once in a blue moon . In this case, his position comes from listening to the treasury secretary and the fed chairman anyway. I think he is right on this one. This isn't right now about who is to blame, there is more than enough blame to go all around anyway. This is an emergency and I am confident the rescue plan will pass in some form as all the US political leaders want it of both parties and all responsible financial experts want it as well. The "man on the street" still thinks this is a bailout for rich wall street fat cats, when actually this about saving their job, their home values, their retirement, etc. 60 percent of Americans are investors, and in my view, that is a good thing. It also matters to Thailand and the world, because if the US melts down, Americans stop shopping.

If the stock market is below levels it should be trading at. Shouldn't you and the other 59% of investors be in there buying it up with both hands? Or is itpossible the markets are not priced properly for the risks that are inherent in stock ownership? If they asked for 2 Trillion and you thought it would make your stocks go back up, would that be OK too?

Lanna, There is currently a record level of cash on the sidelines, both in private equity funds and money market funds. When this bailout bill gets passed and the mark to market accounting laws get scrapped, those funds will get repatriated back into equities, it may not all occur next week or next month but over the next six moinths and beyond U.S. equities will rise substantially. If you hang on to gold, oil or the Euro you will face some serious losses going forward, the Euro in particular is in for quite a fal as the E.U. central banks begin to decrease rates there soon

[lannarebirth]

During times of economic madness, the mad anti-semites come out of the closet. The emergency rescue plan that is now openly supported by Bush, McCain, AND Obama is needed to prevent a worldwide depression and also to prevent hateful thinkers like we have seen here gaining power, as they tend to do during desperate times.

This is the same Bush who said a few months ago that the US economy was strong and that talk of a depression was conspiracy theory. Now you want to trust him with a 'bailout plan' that is just an issuance of credit and will lead to the further devaluation of the dollar. You don't get out of debt by going further into debt.

Even Bush is right once in a blue moon . In this case, his position comes from listening to the treasury secretary and the fed chairman anyway. I think he is right on this one. This isn't right now about who is to blame, there is more than enough blame to go all around anyway. This is an emergency and I am confident the rescue plan will pass in some form as all the US political leaders want it of both parties and all responsible financial experts want it as well. The "man on the street" still thinks this is a bailout for rich wall street fat cats, when actually this about saving their job, their home values, their retirement, etc. 60 percent of Americans are investors, and in my view, that is a good thing. It also matters to Thailand and the world, because if the US melts down, Americans stop shopping.

If the stock market is below levels it should be trading at. Shouldn't you and the other 59% of investors be in there buying it up with both hands? Or is itpossible the markets are not priced properly for the risks that are inherent in stock ownership? If they asked for 2 Trillion and you thought it would make your stocks go back up, would that be OK too?

Lanna, There is currently a record level of cash on the sidelines, both in private equity funds and money market funds. When this bailout bill gets passed and the mark to market accounting laws get scrapped, those funds will get repatriated back into equities, it may not all occur next week or next month but over the next six moinths and beyond U.S. equities will rise substantially. If you hang on to gold, oil or the Euro you will face some serious losses going forward, the Euro in particular is in for quite a fal as the E.U. central banks begin to decrease rates there soon

Get out your glasscutter and frame it on the wall Vic:

SPX.bmp

[pigneguy]

Elite Panic as Bailout Goes Bust: The Shadow of the Pitchfork

By CHRIS FLOYD

September 30, 2008

The vote by the House of Representatives on Monday to defeat the Wall Street bailout plan is the first act of political courage that the Congress of the United States has mounted in the last seven years. The fact that it was due largely to right-wing Republicans afraid of going down with the sinking ship of the witless leader they have followed blindly throughout his reign is a delicious irony -- but the whys and wherefores of the vote are not important. What matters is that one of America's moribund institutions has flickered to life long enough to derail a disastrous action that would have shoved the nation even deeper into the pit of corruption and ruin where it has been mired for so long.

The New York Times called the House vote "a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who had put the full weight of the White House behind the measure." But this is manifestly untrue. As everyone but the nation's media -- and the Democratic Party -- knows, George W. Bush has no "political weight" to use, or lose. Yes, he still retains the authoritarian powers that the spineless Democrats have given him with scarcely a whimper of protest (and often with boundless enthusiasm); but as a political force -- i.e., someone whose opinions and statements can sway popular opinion -- he has been a dead and rotting carcass for a long time. He is the most unpopular president in American history; and I can report from first-hand, eyewitness knowledge that he is thoroughly despised by some of the most rock-ribbed, Bible-believing, flag-waving, down-home, John Wayne-loving Heartland types that you can imagine. Even his own party -- a party fashioned in his own image, the Frankensteinian melding of willfully ignorant religious primitivism and rapaciously greedy crony capitalism that he has embodied in his twerpish person -- kept him away from their convention this year.

Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- could be politically safer than opposing George W. Bush. And yet the entire Democratic leadership, Barack Obama included, lined up to support a cockamamie plan proposed by this scorned and shriveled figure, a plan that was transparently nothing more than an audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods and yet another authoritarian power grab by a gang of murderous, torturing, warmongering toadies. This was the plan and these were the people that the Democrats decided to fight for.

What's more, the Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder with the president on what is apparently the only issue that can now stir Americans to genuine anger and widespread protest: a direct threat to their bank accounts. Wars of aggression like the Nazis used to wage; elaborate tortures like the KGB used to practice; concentration camps, lawbreaking leaders, diminishment of liberty, the slaughter of a million innocent people in a land destroyed by an illegal and pointless invasion -- all of that stuff is pretty much OK, easily swallowable, worth no more than a shrug or perhaps a frowny "tsk tsk" before going on to the sports pages or flipping over to another channel. But put out an open ploy to steal their money and give it to the filthy rich -- and baby, it's pitchfork time! Yet here, as the public face of just such a ploy, is where the Democrats chose to make their stand.

So Monday's rejection of the bailout plan is not a catastrophic political defeat for George W. Bush; he has no political standing, no political future. But it is a vast and humiliating defeat for the Democratic leadership, across the board, who, as Democrat Lloyd Dogget of Texas said,

"'never seriously considered any alternative' to the administration's plan, and had only barely modified what they were given. He criticized the plan for handing over sweeping new powers to an administration that he said was to blame for allowing the crisis to develop in the first place." (From the NYT)

Now the Democratic elites have had their collective head handed to them on a platter. It is a dish most richly deserved. And although it is almost possible to believe that they will learn anything from this episode, there is now a chance -- a chance -- that we can at least have a discussion of alternatives to the Bush scheme.

I still believe it is unlikely any genuinely effective program -- one that could manage and mitigate the now-unavoidable effects of the Wall Street/Washington-induced disaster -- will ever get enacted. After all, the Democrats are largely owned by the same corrupt and greedy elites now seeking a handout. And it seems reasonable to assume that the Bipartisan Bailout Bunch will eventually find some kind of sugar to tempt away the two dozen votes they need for their next "compromise" on the Bush-Paulson plan.

Then again, who know? There are obviously a lot of very powerful and privileged people sweating more bullets tonight than they have sweated in many and many a year. They have roused the drowsy beast of popular anger at last, and no one can say what might happen next. Probably nothing -- or rather, more of the same, in some form or another. But still, it is good to see the icy beads of panic dotting the brows of elites who have inflicted and/or countenanced so much death, destruction, terror and degradation in the past few years. Today they have suffered a very rare defeat in the relentless, remorseless class war they have been waging against us for decades. And that it is something to celebrate -- at least for one night.

Congress Didn't Dare Say Yes: What Wall Street Hoped to Win

By PAM MARTENS

September 30, 2008

"I got a lot of Ph.D. types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, 'This is what we're going to do.' And it's 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

-- President George W. Bush, October 3, 2007

Pity poor President Bush. He's been pushed aside as The Decider. The Decider's strut and press entourage, along with the coffers of the United States, were to be handed to Henry M. (Hank) Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was to have sweeping authority to share newly augmented plunder with his cronies on Wall Street and set up a vast new bailout bureaucracy, all at taxpayer expense.

But, at last, the People's House may be listening to the people. The House of Representatives voted yesterday to reject the bailout measure 228 to 205.

What a truly Orwellian message this proposal would have sent to our nation's children and honest, hard working people everywhere: loot and collapse a 200-year old financial system and you'll be rewarded with a fresh $700 billion of public money to disperse among your cronies who aided and abetted in the collapse.

Mr. Paulson worked as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs until he was sworn in as U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 10, 2006. Exotic instruments created and peddled by Goldman around the globe while Mr. Paulson was Goldman's Decider have contributed to the collapse. His former firm has also benefited to the tune of tens of billions from taxpayer money already doled out by the Federal Reserve. Other firms like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup/Smith Barney that broke the backs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling them billions in explosive derivatives have also seen their prior execs appointed to plum spots in the "rescue" mission.

And expect the bailout proposal to become more corrupted as the days go by. (The proposal reminded me of that cover of BusinessWeek back on May 13, 2002 when the publication posed this question about Wall Street: "How Corrupt Is It?" They answered their own question with a giant picture of a snake encircling the metal pole holding the street sign for Wall Street.) The bailout proposal was so fluid that while I was reading its 106 pages at the web site of CNNMoney on Sunday evening, September 28, 2008, the screen went blank at 7:59 PM. Minutes later, I was reading a different version of the proposal, which had now grown to 110 pages. Fortunately, I had printed out a hard copy of the earlier version and went line by line to see what the Wall Street banksters were up to.

Of particular interest, on page 6, where previously the new Office of Financial Stability would be headed by an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who would require Senate approval, 13 more words were added at the end of the sentence: "except that an interim Assistant Secretary may serve pending confirmation by the Senate."

Realistically, all they would need to do is keep sending conflicted candidates for confirmation hearings and many billions could be spent before the Senate vetted and confirmed the candidate. Also changed on pages 14 and 15 was the manner in which The Decider would be policed: previously it said "any action" taken by the Secretary of the Treasury could be reviewed. That was changed to "policies."

Suspected fraud previously was to be reported to the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury. That was radically changed to create a brand new position of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program. (I think we all know that the position would have been filled with another Wall Street crony.)

But the most duplicitous and frightening aspect of the plan, as always, was to found, buried in the back of the document, located there in the hopes everyone would have fallen asleep from the legalese before they made it that far. There's the innocuous sounding Section 128, which was in both the original and amended versions, and says simply:

"Section 203 of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006 (12 U.S.C. 461 note) is amended by striking 'October 1, 2011' and inserting 'October 1, 2008.'"

What would this effectively do? It was intended to speed up the enactment of this section of the law from 2011 to this week.

And what is the impact of the change in this law? (Take a moment to let this sink in.) This wonderful bipartisan bailout proposal, negotiated into the wee hours of the morning by sleep-deprived members of Congress was designed to come with a furtive Trojan Horse embedded by Wall Street lawyers. Banks already in trouble for lack of capital would get to hold as little as "zero" capital for transactions.

But it does solve one giant mystery. All of Wall Street has been attempting to understand why firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who have concentrated on mergers, acquisitions, stock and bond underwriting for more a cumulative 212 years, decided in a heartbeat to enter the bean counter world of retail banking and transform into bank holding companies. (That's like asking General Motors to retool overnight for washing machines.) Now we know. Effective this week, if this bailout proposal would have passed in its current form, these firms would have had a new best friend at the Fed that was going to let them hold zero reserves for transactions. No wonder the stock of both firms sold off yesterday when Congress rejected the plan: Goldman closed down 12 per cent; Morgan down 15 per cent.

The Trojan Horse in the bailout plan also solves the mystery of how loss-riddled, serially corrupt Citigroup, now run by the former head of a hedge fund, was allowed by the FDIC yesterday to buy $400 Billion in deposits from Wachovia, giving this crippled global tyrant 30 per cent of insured bank deposits in America.

For once, we can be proud of at least 228 members of our Congress. Yes, we do need swift, reasoned action to stave off a financial collapse. But a plan that allows one man to have unfettered access to $700 billion of taxpayer money, decide which firms survive, to potentially concentrate power in a few crony hands, while pushing off even a discussion of vital regulation until next year, is not a plan. It's organized crime thinly disguised as legislation.

A MESSAGE FROM DENNIS KUCINICH:

The Bailout and What's Next

Dear Friend,

Yesterday marked a day that will go down in history, when Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike took on full responsibility to protect the interests of taxpaying Americans, and defeated the deceptive bail out bill, defying the dictates of the Administration, the House Majority Leadership, the House Minority Leadership and the special interests on Wall Street.

Obviously Congress must consider quickly another course. There are immediate issues which demand attention and responsible action by the Congress so that the taxpayers, their assets, and their futures are protected.

We MUST do something to protect millions of Americans whose homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions are at risk in a financial system that has become seriously corrupted. We are told that we must stabilize markets in order for the people to be protected. I think we need to protect peoples' homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions, to order to stabilize the market.

We cannot delay taking action. But the action must benefit all Americans, not just a privileged few. Otherwise, more plans will fail, and the financial security of everyone will be at risk.

The $700 billion bailout would have added to our existing unbearable load of national debt, trade deficits, and the cost of paying for the war. It would have been a disaster for the American public and the government for decades and maybe even centuries to come.

To be sure, there are many different reasons why people voted against the bailout. The legislation did not regard in any meaningful way the plight of millions of Americans who are about to lose their homes. It did nothing to strengthen existing regulatory structures or impose new ones at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve in order to protect investors. There were no direct protections for bank depositors. There was nothing to stop further speculation, which is what brought us into this mess in the first place.

This was a bailout for some firms (and investors) on Wall Street, with the idea that in doing so there would be certain, unspecified, general benefits to the economy.

This is a perfect time to open a broader discussion about our financial system, especially our monetary system. Such a discussion is like searching for a needle in a haystack, and then, upon finding it, discussing its qualities at great length. Let me briefly describe the haystack instead.

Here is a very quick explanation of the $700 billion bailout within the context of the mechanics of our monetary and banking system:

The taxpayers loan money to the banks. But the taxpayers do not have the money. So we have to borrow it from the banks to give it back to the banks. But the banks do not have the money to loan to the government. So they create it into existence (through a mechanism called fractional reserve) and then loan it to us, at interest, so we can then give it back to them.

Confused?

This is the system. This is the standard mechanism used to expand the money supply on a daily basis not a special one designed only for the "$700 billion" transaction. People will explain this to you in many different ways, but this is what it comes down to.

The banks needed Congress' approval. Of course in this topsy turvy world, it is the banks which set the terms of the money they are borrowing from the taxpayers. And what do we get for this transaction? Long term debt enslavement of our country. We get to pay back to the banks trillions of dollars ($700 billion with compounded interest) and the banks give us their bad debt which they cull from everywhere in the world.

Who could turn down a deal like this? I did.

The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom.

Under the failed $700 billion bailout plan, Wall Street's profits are Wall Street's profits and Wall Street's losses are the taxpayers' losses. Profits are capitalized. Losses are socialized.

We are at a teachable moment on matters of money and finance. In the coming days and weeks, I will share with you thoughts about what can be done to take us not just in a new direction, but in a new direction which is just.

Thank you,

Dennis Kucinich

www. Kucinich. us

216-252-9000 877-933-6647

A MESSAGE FROM MICHAEL MOORE:

Friends,

Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan's finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.

But what they didn't know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.

The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.

A lot of people are wondering why the right wing of the Republican Party joined with the left wing of the Democratic Party in voting down the thievery. Forty percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans voted against the bill.

Here's what happened:

The presidential race may still be close in the polls, but the Congressional races are pointing toward a landslide for the Democrats. Few dispute the prediction that the Republicans are in for a whoopin' on November 4th. Up to 30 Republican House seats could be lost in what would be a stunning repudiation of their agenda.

The Republican reps are so scared of losing their seats, when this "financial crisis" reared its head two weeks ago, they realized they had just been handed their one and only chance to separate themselves from Bush before the election, while doing something that would make them look like they were on the side of "the people."

Watching C-Span yesterday morning was one of the best comedy shows I'd seen in ages. There they were, one Republican after another who had backed the war and sunk the country into record debt, who had voted to kill every regulation that would have kept Wall Street in check -- there they were, now crying foul and standing up for the little guy! One after another, they stood at the microphone on the House floor and threw Bush under the bus, under the train (even though they had voted to kill off our nation's trains, too), heck, they would've thrown him under the rising waters of the Lower Ninth Ward if they could've conjured up another hurricane. You know how your dog acts when sprayed by a skunk? He howls and runs around trying to shake it off, rubbing and rolling himself on every piece of your carpet, trying to get rid of the stench. That's what it looked like on the Republican side of the aisle yesterday, and it was a sight to behold.

The 95 brave Dems who broke with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were the real heroes, just like those few who stood up and voted against the war in October of 2002. Watch the remarks from yesterday of Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Dennis Kucinich. They spoke the truth.

The Dems who voted for the giveaway did so mostly because they were scared by the threats of Wall Street, that if the rich didn't get their handout, the market would go nuts and then it's bye-bye stock-based pension and retirement funds.

And guess what? That's exactly what Wall Street did! The largest, single-day drop in the Dow in the history of the New York Stock exchange. The news anchors last night screamed it out: Americans just lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the stock market!! It's a financial Pearl Harbor! The sky is falling! Bird flu! Killer Bees!

Of course, sane people know that nobody "lost" anything yesterday, that stocks go up and down and this too shall pass because the rich will now buy low, hold, then sell off, then buy low again.

But for now, Wall Street and its propaganda arm (the networks and media it owns) will continue to try and scare the bejesus out of you. It will be harder to get a loan. Some people will lose their jobs. A weak nation of wimps won't last long under this torture. Or will we? Is this our line in the sand?

Here's my guess: The Democratic leadership in the House secretly hoped all along that this lousy bill would go down. With Bush's proposals shredded, the Dems knew they could then write their own bill that favors the average American, not the upper 10% who were hoping for another kegger of gold.

So the ball is in the Democrats' hands. The gun from Wall Street remains at their head. Before they make their next move, let me tell you what the media kept silent about while this bill was being debated:

1. The bailout bill had NO enforcement provisions for the so-called oversight group that was going to monitor Wall Street's spending of the $700 billion;

2. It had NO penalties, fines or imprisonment for any executive who might steal any of the people's money;

3. It did NOTHING to force banks and lenders to rewrite people's mortgages to avoid foreclosures -- this bill would not have stopped ONE foreclosure!;

4. It had NO teeth anywhere in the entire piece of legislation, using words like "suggested" when referring to the government being paid back for the bailout;

5. Over 200 economists wrote to Congress and said this bill might actually WORSEN the "financial crisis" and cause even MORE of a meltdown.

Put a fork in this slab of pork. It's over. Now it is time for our side to state very clearly the laws WE want passed. I will send you my proposals later today. We've bought ourselves less than 72 hours.

[lannarebirth]

During times of economic madness, the mad anti-semites come out of the closet. The emergency rescue plan that is now openly supported by Bush, McCain, AND Obama is needed to prevent a worldwide depression and also to prevent hateful thinkers like we have seen here gaining power, as they tend to do during desperate times.

This is the same Bush who said a few months ago that the US economy was strong and that talk of a depression was conspiracy theory. Now you want to trust him with a 'bailout plan' that is just an issuance of credit and will lead to the further devaluation of the dollar. You don't get out of debt by going further into debt.

Even Bush is right once in a blue moon . In this case, his position comes from listening to the treasury secretary and the fed chairman anyway. I think he is right on this one. This isn't right now about who is to blame, there is more than enough blame to go all around anyway. This is an emergency and I am confident the rescue plan will pass in some form as all the US political leaders want it of both parties and all responsible financial experts want it as well. The "man on the street" still thinks this is a bailout for rich wall street fat cats, when actually this about saving their job, their home values, their retirement, etc. 60 percent of Americans are investors, and in my view, that is a good thing. It also matters to Thailand and the world, because if the US melts down, Americans stop shopping.

If the stock market is below levels it should be trading at. Shouldn't you and the other 59% of investors be in there buying it up with both hands? Or is itpossible the markets are not priced properly for the risks that are inherent in stock ownership? If they asked for 2 Trillion and you thought it would make your stocks go back up, would that be OK too?

Lanna, There is currently a record level of cash on the sidelines, both in private equity funds and money market funds. When this bailout bill gets passed and the mark to market accounting laws get scrapped, those funds will get repatriated back into equities, it may not all occur next week or next month but over the next six moinths and beyond U.S. equities will rise substantially. If you hang on to gold, oil or the Euro you will face some serious losses going forward, the Euro in particular is in for quite a fal as the E.U. central banks begin to decrease rates there soon

I agree with the part I highlighted Vic. Let these investors take the risk, and if they've calculated the risks wisely I hope they are handsomely rewarded. Leave me out of it.

[VegasVic]

Elite Panic as Bailout Goes Bust: The Shadow of the Pitchfork

By CHRIS FLOYD

September 30, 2008

The vote by the House of Representatives on Monday to defeat the Wall Street bailout plan is the first act of political courage that the Congress of the United States has mounted in the last seven years. The fact that it was due largely to right-wing Republicans afraid of going down with the sinking ship of the witless leader they have followed blindly throughout his reign is a delicious irony -- but the whys and wherefores of the vote are not important. What matters is that one of America's moribund institutions has flickered to life long enough to derail a disastrous action that would have shoved the nation even deeper into the pit of corruption and ruin where it has been mired for so long.

The New York Times called the House vote "a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who had put the full weight of the White House behind the measure." But this is manifestly untrue. As everyone but the nation's media -- and the Democratic Party -- knows, George W. Bush has no "political weight" to use, or lose. Yes, he still retains the authoritarian powers that the spineless Democrats have given him with scarcely a whimper of protest (and often with boundless enthusiasm); but as a political force -- i.e., someone whose opinions and statements can sway popular opinion -- he has been a dead and rotting carcass for a long time. He is the most unpopular president in American history; and I can report from first-hand, eyewitness knowledge that he is thoroughly despised by some of the most rock-ribbed, Bible-believing, flag-waving, down-home, John Wayne-loving Heartland types that you can imagine. Even his own party -- a party fashioned in his own image, the Frankensteinian melding of willfully ignorant religious primitivism and rapaciously greedy crony capitalism that he has embodied in his twerpish person -- kept him away from their convention this year.

Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- could be politically safer than opposing George W. Bush. And yet the entire Democratic leadership, Barack Obama included, lined up to support a cockamamie plan proposed by this scorned and shriveled figure, a plan that was transparently nothing more than an audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods and yet another authoritarian power grab by a gang of murderous, torturing, warmongering toadies. This was the plan and these were the people that the Democrats decided to fight for.

What's more, the Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder with the president on what is apparently the only issue that can now stir Americans to genuine anger and widespread protest: a direct threat to their bank accounts. Wars of aggression like the Nazis used to wage; elaborate tortures like the KGB used to practice; concentration camps, lawbreaking leaders, diminishment of liberty, the slaughter of a million innocent people in a land destroyed by an illegal and pointless invasion -- all of that stuff is pretty much OK, easily swallowable, worth no more than a shrug or perhaps a frowny "tsk tsk" before going on to the sports pages or flipping over to another channel. But put out an open ploy to steal their money and give it to the filthy rich -- and baby, it's pitchfork time! Yet here, as the public face of just such a ploy, is where the Democrats chose to make their stand.

So Monday's rejection of the bailout plan is not a catastrophic political defeat for George W. Bush; he has no political standing, no political future. But it is a vast and humiliating defeat for the Democratic leadership, across the board, who, as Democrat Lloyd Dogget of Texas said,

"'never seriously considered any alternative' to the administration's plan, and had only barely modified what they were given. He criticized the plan for handing over sweeping new powers to an administration that he said was to blame for allowing the crisis to develop in the first place." (From the NYT)

Now the Democratic elites have had their collective head handed to them on a platter. It is a dish most richly deserved. And although it is almost possible to believe that they will learn anything from this episode, there is now a chance -- a chance -- that we can at least have a discussion of alternatives to the Bush scheme.

I still believe it is unlikely any genuinely effective program -- one that could manage and mitigate the now-unavoidable effects of the Wall Street/Washington-induced disaster -- will ever get enacted. After all, the Democrats are largely owned by the same corrupt and greedy elites now seeking a handout. And it seems reasonable to assume that the Bipartisan Bailout Bunch will eventually find some kind of sugar to tempt away the two dozen votes they need for their next "compromise" on the Bush-Paulson plan.

Then again, who know? There are obviously a lot of very powerful and privileged people sweating more bullets tonight than they have sweated in many and many a year. They have roused the drowsy beast of popular anger at last, and no one can say what might happen next. Probably nothing -- or rather, more of the same, in some form or another. But still, it is good to see the icy beads of panic dotting the brows of elites who have inflicted and/or countenanced so much death, destruction, terror and degradation in the past few years. Today they have suffered a very rare defeat in the relentless, remorseless class war they have been waging against us for decades. And that it is something to celebrate -- at least for one night.

Congress Didn't Dare Say Yes: What Wall Street Hoped to Win

By PAM MARTENS

September 30, 2008

"I got a lot of Ph.D. types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, 'This is what we're going to do.' And it's 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

-- President George W. Bush, October 3, 2007

Pity poor President Bush. He's been pushed aside as The Decider. The Decider's strut and press entourage, along with the coffers of the United States, were to be handed to Henry M. (Hank) Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was to have sweeping authority to share newly augmented plunder with his cronies on Wall Street and set up a vast new bailout bureaucracy, all at taxpayer expense.

But, at last, the People's House may be listening to the people. The House of Representatives voted yesterday to reject the bailout measure 228 to 205.

What a truly Orwellian message this proposal would have sent to our nation's children and honest, hard working people everywhere: loot and collapse a 200-year old financial system and you'll be rewarded with a fresh $700 billion of public money to disperse among your cronies who aided and abetted in the collapse.

Mr. Paulson worked as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs until he was sworn in as U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 10, 2006. Exotic instruments created and peddled by Goldman around the globe while Mr. Paulson was Goldman's Decider have contributed to the collapse. His former firm has also benefited to the tune of tens of billions from taxpayer money already doled out by the Federal Reserve. Other firms like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup/Smith Barney that broke the backs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling them billions in explosive derivatives have also seen their prior execs appointed to plum spots in the "rescue" mission.

And expect the bailout proposal to become more corrupted as the days go by. (The proposal reminded me of that cover of BusinessWeek back on May 13, 2002 when the publication posed this question about Wall Street: "How Corrupt Is It?" They answered their own question with a giant picture of a snake encircling the metal pole holding the street sign for Wall Street.) The bailout proposal was so fluid that while I was reading its 106 pages at the web site of CNNMoney on Sunday evening, September 28, 2008, the screen went blank at 7:59 PM. Minutes later, I was reading a different version of the proposal, which had now grown to 110 pages. Fortunately, I had printed out a hard copy of the earlier version and went line by line to see what the Wall Street banksters were up to.

Of particular interest, on page 6, where previously the new Office of Financial Stability would be headed by an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who would require Senate approval, 13 more words were added at the end of the sentence: "except that an interim Assistant Secretary may serve pending confirmation by the Senate."

Realistically, all they would need to do is keep sending conflicted candidates for confirmation hearings and many billions could be spent before the Senate vetted and confirmed the candidate. Also changed on pages 14 and 15 was the manner in which The Decider would be policed: previously it said "any action" taken by the Secretary of the Treasury could be reviewed. That was changed to "policies."

Suspected fraud previously was to be reported to the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury. That was radically changed to create a brand new position of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program. (I think we all know that the position would have been filled with another Wall Street crony.)

But the most duplicitous and frightening aspect of the plan, as always, was to found, buried in the back of the document, located there in the hopes everyone would have fallen asleep from the legalese before they made it that far. There's the innocuous sounding Section 128, which was in both the original and amended versions, and says simply:

"Section 203 of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006 (12 U.S.C. 461 note) is amended by striking 'October 1, 2011' and inserting 'October 1, 2008.'"

What would this effectively do? It was intended to speed up the enactment of this section of the law from 2011 to this week.

And what is the impact of the change in this law? (Take a moment to let this sink in.) This wonderful bipartisan bailout proposal, negotiated into the wee hours of the morning by sleep-deprived members of Congress was designed to come with a furtive Trojan Horse embedded by Wall Street lawyers. Banks already in trouble for lack of capital would get to hold as little as "zero" capital for transactions.

But it does solve one giant mystery. All of Wall Street has been attempting to understand why firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who have concentrated on mergers, acquisitions, stock and bond underwriting for more a cumulative 212 years, decided in a heartbeat to enter the bean counter world of retail banking and transform into bank holding companies. (That's like asking General Motors to retool overnight for washing machines.) Now we know. Effective this week, if this bailout proposal would have passed in its current form, these firms would have had a new best friend at the Fed that was going to let them hold zero reserves for transactions. No wonder the stock of both firms sold off yesterday when Congress rejected the plan: Goldman closed down 12 per cent; Morgan down 15 per cent.

The Trojan Horse in the bailout plan also solves the mystery of how loss-riddled, serially corrupt Citigroup, now run by the former head of a hedge fund, was allowed by the FDIC yesterday to buy $400 Billion in deposits from Wachovia, giving this crippled global tyrant 30 per cent of insured bank deposits in America.

For once, we can be proud of at least 228 members of our Congress. Yes, we do need swift, reasoned action to stave off a financial collapse. But a plan that allows one man to have unfettered access to $700 billion of taxpayer money, decide which firms survive, to potentially concentrate power in a few crony hands, while pushing off even a discussion of vital regulation until next year, is not a plan. It's organized crime thinly disguised as legislation.

A MESSAGE FROM DENNIS KUCINICH:

The Bailout and What's Next

Dear Friend,

Yesterday marked a day that will go down in history, when Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike took on full responsibility to protect the interests of taxpaying Americans, and defeated the deceptive bail out bill, defying the dictates of the Administration, the House Majority Leadership, the House Minority Leadership and the special interests on Wall Street.

Obviously Congress must consider quickly another course. There are immediate issues which demand attention and responsible action by the Congress so that the taxpayers, their assets, and their futures are protected.

We MUST do something to protect millions of Americans whose homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions are at risk in a financial system that has become seriously corrupted. We are told that we must stabilize markets in order for the people to be protected. I think we need to protect peoples' homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions, to order to stabilize the market.

We cannot delay taking action. But the action must benefit all Americans, not just a privileged few. Otherwise, more plans will fail, and the financial security of everyone will be at risk.

The $700 billion bailout would have added to our existing unbearable load of national debt, trade deficits, and the cost of paying for the war. It would have been a disaster for the American public and the government for decades and maybe even centuries to come.

To be sure, there are many different reasons why people voted against the bailout. The legislation did not regard in any meaningful way the plight of millions of Americans who are about to lose their homes. It did nothing to strengthen existing regulatory structures or impose new ones at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve in order to protect investors. There were no direct protections for bank depositors. There was nothing to stop further speculation, which is what brought us into this mess in the first place.

This was a bailout for some firms (and investors) on Wall Street, with the idea that in doing so there would be certain, unspecified, general benefits to the economy.

This is a perfect time to open a broader discussion about our financial system, especially our monetary system. Such a discussion is like searching for a needle in a haystack, and then, upon finding it, discussing its qualities at great length. Let me briefly describe the haystack instead.

Here is a very quick explanation of the $700 billion bailout within the context of the mechanics of our monetary and banking system:

The taxpayers loan money to the banks. But the taxpayers do not have the money. So we have to borrow it from the banks to give it back to the banks. But the banks do not have the money to loan to the government. So they create it into existence (through a mechanism called fractional reserve) and then loan it to us, at interest, so we can then give it back to them.

Confused?

This is the system. This is the standard mechanism used to expand the money supply on a daily basis not a special one designed only for the "$700 billion" transaction. People will explain this to you in many different ways, but this is what it comes down to.

The banks needed Congress' approval. Of course in this topsy turvy world, it is the banks which set the terms of the money they are borrowing from the taxpayers. And what do we get for this transaction? Long term debt enslavement of our country. We get to pay back to the banks trillions of dollars ($700 billion with compounded interest) and the banks give us their bad debt which they cull from everywhere in the world.

Who could turn down a deal like this? I did.

The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom.

Under the failed $700 billion bailout plan, Wall Street's profits are Wall Street's profits and Wall Street's losses are the taxpayers' losses. Profits are capitalized. Losses are socialized.

We are at a teachable moment on matters of money and finance. In the coming days and weeks, I will share with you thoughts about what can be done to take us not just in a new direction, but in a new direction which is just.

Thank you,

Dennis Kucinich

www. Kucinich. us

216-252-9000 877-933-6647

A MESSAGE FROM MICHAEL MOORE:

Friends,

Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan's finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.

But what they didn't know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.

The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.

A lot of people are wondering why the right wing of the Republican Party joined with the left wing of the Democratic Party in voting down the thievery. Forty percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans voted against the bill.

Here's what happened:

The presidential race may still be close in the polls, but the Congressional races are pointing toward a landslide for the Democrats. Few dispute the prediction that the Republicans are in for a whoopin' on November 4th. Up to 30 Republican House seats could be lost in what would be a stunning repudiation of their agenda.

The Republican reps are so scared of losing their seats, when this "financial crisis" reared its head two weeks ago, they realized they had just been handed their one and only chance to separate themselves from Bush before the election, while doing something that would make them look like they were on the side of "the people."

Watching C-Span yesterday morning was one of the best comedy shows I'd seen in ages. There they were, one Republican after another who had backed the war and sunk the country into record debt, who had voted to kill every regulation that would have kept Wall Street in check -- there they were, now crying foul and standing up for the little guy! One after another, they stood at the microphone on the House floor and threw Bush under the bus, under the train (even though they had voted to kill off our nation's trains, too), heck, they would've thrown him under the rising waters of the Lower Ninth Ward if they could've conjured up another hurricane. You know how your dog acts when sprayed by a skunk? He howls and runs around trying to shake it off, rubbing and rolling himself on every piece of your carpet, trying to get rid of the stench. That's what it looked like on the Republican side of the aisle yesterday, and it was a sight to behold.

The 95 brave Dems who broke with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were the real heroes, just like those few who stood up and voted against the war in October of 2002. Watch the remarks from yesterday of Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Dennis Kucinich. They spoke the truth.

The Dems who voted for the giveaway did so mostly because they were scared by the threats of Wall Street, that if the rich didn't get their handout, the market would go nuts and then it's bye-bye stock-based pension and retirement funds.

And guess what? That's exactly what Wall Street did! The largest, single-day drop in the Dow in the history of the New York Stock exchange. The news anchors last night screamed it out: Americans just lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the stock market!! It's a financial Pearl Harbor! The sky is falling! Bird flu! Killer Bees!

Of course, sane people know that nobody "lost" anything yesterday, that stocks go up and down and this too shall pass because the rich will now buy low, hold, then sell off, then buy low again.

But for now, Wall Street and its propaganda arm (the networks and media it owns) will continue to try and scare the bejesus out of you. It will be harder to get a loan. Some people will lose their jobs. A weak nation of wimps won't last long under this torture. Or will we? Is this our line in the sand?

Here's my guess: The Democratic leadership in the House secretly hoped all along that this lousy bill would go down. With Bush's proposals shredded, the Dems knew they could then write their own bill that favors the average American, not the upper 10% who were hoping for another kegger of gold.

So the ball is in the Democrats' hands. The gun from Wall Street remains at their head. Before they make their next move, let me tell you what the media kept silent about while this bill was being debated:

1. The bailout bill had NO enforcement provisions for the so-called oversight group that was going to monitor Wall Street's spending of the $700 billion;

2. It had NO penalties, fines or imprisonment for any executive who might steal any of the people's money;

3. It did NOTHING to force banks and lenders to rewrite people's mortgages to avoid foreclosures -- this bill would not have stopped ONE foreclosure!;

4. It had NO teeth anywhere in the entire piece of legislation, using words like "suggested" when referring to the government being paid back for the bailout;

5. Over 200 economists wrote to Congress and said this bill might actually WORSEN the "financial crisis" and cause even MORE of a meltdown.

Put a fork in this slab of pork. It's over. Now it is time for our side to state very clearly the laws WE want passed. I will send you my proposals later today. We've bought ourselves less than 72 hours.

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts What will happen is that mark to market accounting will die a horrible death (long overdue) and the government will step in to insure the underlying assets and create a liquid market I personally wish that the government would set up an RTC type entity and step in and buy all of these loans at fire sale prices as Warren Buffet recently did with his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs pf issue, because the government could make a killing on the deal and at the same time teach Wall Street a hard lesson! Instead the final bill will likely just insure the underlying assets and allow the holders to unwind them as the market strengthens, and I'm sure there will be plenty of pork for the democrats like the siphoning off of funds to ACORN (an extremely left wing and borderline militant organization within the U.S.) we saw in this last bill

[pigneguy]

New age town embraces dollar alternative

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNew...=RSS&rpc=22

The Bank of Common Knowledge exports the dynamics of Free Culture and the Copyleft philosophy to general processes of knowledge generation and transmission among citizens. Work processes and methodologies are researched while the production of content, mutual education and citizen participation is carried out for the purpose of giving free access to the knowledge generated by the communities in which the Common Knowledge Bank is installed.

The main topics we focus on are:

EDUCATION (P2Pedagogy)

Experiments in the transmission of knowledge.

Generating educational methodologies and systems which augment the possibility to turn each moment of one's life into an opportunity to learn.

ECONOMY

Models of auto-management of cultural projects. Exploration of economic systems sustainable for free culture.

ECOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE

Going beyond the creation of free contents to engage also in strategies of exchange and recycling of knowledge in danger of disappearing.

PUBLIC SPACE

Investigating the various use of public space related to the transmission of knowledge. Exploring the existing possibilities to use public space for collective activities of exchange (guide of places and actions required to be able to use them).

CITIZEN RIGHTS

What are our rights, what can we do in case of abuse, experiences of communities who work to improve life in common.

http://bancocomun.org/?lang=en

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archi...-set-up-a-1.php

[dave_boo]

pigneguy;

Nice compilation. It was helpful to pass it around to my co-workers.

[lannarebirth]

Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com...ut-foreign.html

[drayon]

Wall Street Bailout

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=303980

Wall Street Bailout -- 10/01/2008

The Senate approved a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Senator Bernie Sanders voted against the bill that would put Wall Street’s burden on the backs of the American middle class. “The bailout package is far better than the absurd proposal originally presented to us by the Bush administration, but is still short of where we should be,” Sanders said. “If a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, if we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from President Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation who should pick up the tab, not ordinary working people.”

Sanders proposed a five-year, 10 percent surtax on families with incomes of more than $1 million year and individuals earning over $500,00 to raise $300 billion to help bankroll the bailout. Senators, however, set aside the amendment on a voice vote.

In a Senate floor speech, Sanders elaborated on the bailout bill’s flaws:

"This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation. We can do better than the legislation now before Congress.

"This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand picked by the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.

"This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulatory fervor which created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments such as credit default swaps and hedge funds. This bill does not address the issue that has taken us to where we are today, the concept of too big to fail. In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions like the Bank of America swallow up other gigantic financial institutions like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Well, who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to fail? There is not one word about the issue of too big to fail in this legislation at a time when that problem is in fact becoming even more serious.

"This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks that's a little bit weird, but that is what I think.

"This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

"There is one issue that is even more profound and more basic than everything else that I have mentioned, and that is if a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, whose money should it be? In other words, who should be paying for this bailout which has been caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street operatives who have made billions in recent years?

"The American people are bitter. They are angry, and they are confused. Over the last seven and a half year, since George W. Bush has been President, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty, and today working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families. Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000. More than seven million Americans have lost their health insurance. Over four million have lost their pensions. Consumer debt has more than doubled. And foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college and other basic necessities has soared.

"While the middle class has declined under President Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth, and at the end of 2007 owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families, a $670 billion increase in wealth since Bush has been in office.

"In our country today, we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth, with the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses. We have seen the incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could flourish. We have seen them play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand. We have seen the financial services industry charge 30 percent interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unsuspecting customers. We have seen them engaged in despicable predatory lending practices, taking advantage of the vulnerable and the uneducated. We have seen them send out billions of deceptive solicitations to almost every mailbox in America.

"Most importantly, we have seen the financial services industry lure people into mortgages they could not afford to pay, which is one of the basic reasons why we are here tonight.

"In the midst of all of this, we have a bailout package which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the “Masters of the Universe,” those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse. Now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces that they broke. That is wrong, and that is something that I will not support.

"If we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation, those people are the people who should pick up the tab, and not ordinary working people. I introduced an amendment which gave the Senate a very clear choice. We can pay for this bailout of Wall Street by asking people all across this country, small businesses on Main Street, homeowners on Maple Street, elderly couples on Oak Street, college students on Campus Avenue, working families on Sunrise Lane, we can ask them to pay for this bailout. That is one way we can go. Or, we can ask the people who have gained the most from the spasm of greed, the people whose incomes have been soaring under president bush, to pick up the tab.

"I proposed to raise the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more or any family earning $1 million a year or more by 10 percent. That increase in the tax rate, from 35 percent to 45 percent, would raise more than $300 billion in the next five years, almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation say is correct, that the government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the government sells some of the assets it has purchased, then $300 billion should be sufficient to make sure that 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout.

"Most of my constituents did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in three years, as did Henry Paulson, the current secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Most of my constituents did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past five years as did Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers. Most of my constituents did not cash out $60 million in stock after a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns after that failing company was bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase. Most of my constituents did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neill, former CEO Merrill Lynch did.

"Last week I placed on my Web site, www.sanders.senate.gov, a letter to Secretary Paulson in support of my amendment. It said that it should be those people best able to pay for this bailout, those people who have made out like bandits in recent years, they should be asked to pay for this bailout. It should not be the middle class. To my amazement, some 48,000 people cosigned this petition, and the names keep coming in. The message is very simple: “We had nothing to do with causing this bailout. We are already under economic duress. Go to those people who have made out like bandits. Go to those people who have caused this crisis and ask them to pay for the bailout.”

"The time has come to assure our constituents in Vermont and all over this country that we are listening and understand their anger and their frustration. The time has come to say that we have the courage to stand up to all of the powerful financial institution lobbyists who are running amok all over the Capitol building, from the Chamber of Commerce to the American Bankers Association, to the Business Roundtable, all of these groups who make huge campaign contributions, spend all kinds of money on lobbyists, they're here loud and clear. They don't want to pay for this bailout, they want middle America to pay for it."

Edited October 2, 2008 by drayon

[ding]

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts What will happen is that mark to market accounting will die a horrible death (long overdue) and the government will step in to insure the underlying assets and create a liquid market I personally wish that the government would set up an RTC type entity and step in and buy all of these loans at fire sale prices as Warren Buffet recently did with his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs pf issue, because the government could make a killing on the deal and at the same time teach Wall Street a hard lesson! Instead the final bill will likely just insure the underlying assets and allow the holders to unwind them as the market strengthens, and I'm sure there will be plenty of pork for the democrats like the siphoning off of funds to ACORN (an extremely left wing and borderline militant organization within the U.S.) we saw in this last bill

This sort of post is glaringly blind by now, I just can't restarin myself;

.........................

Really? What the world economy needs are more foxes to guard the henhouses? Shall we grill the chicken for them as well?

Please pay attention. It's very cheap. It's online and free for the clicking. It's NOT on the television in America anymore, however.

Pork is for Republicans and their corporate masters, not Democrats. News flash; your world is upside down.

1) Democrats are fiscally conservative, Republicans grow government insanely and spend like drunken sailors.

2) Republicans are pork fiends. Wake up please.

3) There are recording devices, but facts and truth never make it to air.

4) People are, as always, easy to fool.

Especially concrete sequential mind-types who memorize inputs and engrain information deeply. These are the easiest to brainwash. They think it, authorities state it, therefore questioning is without warrant.

[OldgitTom]

Fullwhenempty:

right on, except ‘Jewish’ banks are rather Rothschilds behind their various banking fronts.

Pigneguy:

truly great post on the Great Banking Scam, congratulations.

So, here we are: unless we have buried gold bricks, we face losing house, job, savings &/or pensions. Even if the current bailouts work, that will only incur more debt, so making the next financial crash even bigger.

Frozen methane gas in the Arctic is defrosting. This is the beginning of runaway global warming – The End.

If the first two don’t get us, my paper today forecasts that the earth’s resources will run out by 2050 (& now for the sports results - - - - ).

Our present political system has failed us spectacularly. It is rotten & incompetent from top to bottom (dynamic young Barack is proving as effective as a limp dick in a knocking shop). Either we replace it with a real democratic system – a revolution – or as Tom Lehrer used to sing, “We’ll all go together when we go”.

Nature is hard but fair. Species too dumb to adapt to change go extinct.

[ding]

Fullwhenempty:

right on, except ‘Jewish’ banks are rather Rothschilds behind their various banking fronts.

Pigneguy:

truly great post on the Great Banking Scam, congratulations.

So, here we are: unless we have buried gold bricks, we face losing house, job, savings &/or pensions. Even if the current bailouts work, that will only incur more debt, so making the next financial crash even bigger.

Frozen methane gas in the Arctic is defrosting. This is the beginning of runaway global warming – The End.

If the first two don’t get us, my paper today forecasts that the earth’s resources will run out by 2050 (& now for the sports results - - - - ).

Our present political system has failed us spectacularly. It is rotten & incompetent from top to bottom (dynamic young Barack is proving as effective as a limp dick in a knocking shop). Either we replace it with a real democratic system – a revolution – or as Tom Lehrer used to sing, “We’ll all go together when we go”.

Nature is hard but fair. Species too dumb to adapt to change go extinct.

Sad but true. We're past 'culling the herd' stage. We're to the point where the herd itself is about to be culled. In geological terms it's a second away. Climate change affects Thailand and all the world, and over-arches the financial tectonic shift we are doomed to.

Good post but it will not find the deaf and blind who need to wake up and see the forrest from the trees.

[Tinkelbell]

I'm sorry to say this meltdown is America isn't surprising at all, but results from decades of spending more than was earned and borrowing the rest.

Exactly.

It amazed me, when I first visited Thailand some 25 years ago, to meet Americans who would tell me that

they would be paying for their holiday for the rest of the year.

I would not contemplate taking my holiday abroad until I had saved enough money

to cover all my expenses.

Which brought me back the ( not so great) memory.

On my very first trip to the US in the early '70. While driving, I saw the ad on one of the bank's bill board ......" Low interests on loan for summer vacation." I said to myself I would never thinking to take a loan for a vacation. Picture yourself while you're enjoying every moment during the break, you always have this cloud over your head that after vacation ends, you have to work harder to pay off the loan for a year or more. That feeling is quite miserable for people owing someone's money. Only after you finish paying your loan, you'll feel like a big mountain had been lifted from your chest.

'Astral' I'm fully with you.

This thinking has shaping me into learning how to saving. I make a habit ...if I want something I'll start saving, that's how I pay cash for those personal use like a house, cars, travels etc.

[animatic]

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts....

1) Democrats are fiscally conservative, Republicans grow government insanely and spend like drunken sailors.

4) People are, as always, easy to fool.

Especially concrete sequential mind-types who memorize inputs and engrain information deeply. These are the easiest to brainwash. They think it, authorities state it, therefore questioning is without warrant.

Well the last 20 years this has proved true.

Ignoring a Newt Gingrich anomolieAnd many of Gingrich's cronies

got canned for illegal graft or similar things... Not the clean hands people for sure.

Clinton left a huge surplus and Bush trashed it in record time.

Leaving 10 years of debt to clear up,

and no end in sight of frosting on the debt cake too.

Regan left a HUGE deficit. It eventually got whittled down.

People have been blinded by republican rhetoric

and religious conservatism, and ignored the horrors they perpetrate.

Then the Dems inherit a totally disordered system and get blamed for

tax and spend to correct the mess.

I find it quite blindered when people say 'the two parties are just the same'.

You MUST be kidding. They both suck, but in quite different ways.

Bush has upped the ante considerably

and even tries to do it more within a month of the election.

Nothing to lose, screw McCain, let's make a bundle for the boys.

[animatic]

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts....

1) Democrats are fiscally conservative, Republicans grow government insanely and spend like drunken sailors.

4) People are, as always, easy to fool.

Especially concrete sequential mind-types who memorize inputs and engrain information deeply. These are the easiest to brainwash. They think it, authorities state it, therefore questioning is without warrant.

Well the last 20 years this has proved true.

Ignoring a Newt Gingrich anomolieAnd many of Gingrich's cronies

got canned for illegal graft or similar things... Not the clean hands people for sure.

Clinton left a huge surplus and Bush trashed it in record time.

Leaving 10 years of debt to clear up,

and no end in sight of frosting on the debt cake too.

Regan left a HUGE deficit. It eventually got whittled down.

People have been blinded by republican rhetoric

and religious conservatism, and ignored the horrors they perpetrate.

Then the Dems inherit a totally disordered system and get blamed for

tax and spend to correct the mess.

I find it quite blindered when people say 'the two parties are just the same'.

You MUST be kidding. They both suck, but in quite different ways.

Bush has upped the ante considerably

and even tries to do it more within a month of the election.

Nothing to lose, screw McCain, let's make a bundle for the boys.

[bottleymike]

what was the big mac problem about?

Every one changed to eating KFC instead!

[larvidchr]

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts....

1) Democrats are fiscally conservative, Republicans grow government insanely and spend like drunken sailors.

4) People are, as always, easy to fool.

Especially concrete sequential mind-types who memorize inputs and engrain information deeply. These are the easiest to brainwash. They think it, authorities state it, therefore questioning is without warrant.

Well the last 20 years this has proved true.

Ignoring a Newt Gingrich anomolieAnd many of Gingrich's cronies

got canned for illegal graft or similar things... Not the clean hands people for sure.

Clinton left a huge surplus and Bush trashed it in record time.

Leaving 10 years of debt to clear up,

and no end in sight of frosting on the debt cake too.

Regan left a HUGE deficit. It eventually got whittled down.

People have been blinded by republican rhetoric

and religious conservatism, and ignored the horrors they perpetrate.

Then the Dems inherit a totally disordered system and get blamed for

tax and spend to correct the mess.

I find it quite blindered when people say 'the two parties are just the same'.

You MUST be kidding. They both suck, but in quite different ways.

Bush has upped the ante considerably

and even tries to do it more within a month of the election.

Nothing to lose, screw McCain, let's make a bundle for the boys.

There is plenty of blame to spread around and it would be nice with some balancing against the "fruitcake Moore" and other one sided views.

I am not surprised to see Democrats screaming how they want protection for the mortgage holders in the rescue packet after all they are according to some the real responsible behind this mess, forcing the banks to lend money to ethnic minority groups and other poor Americans who under normal circumstances would not qualify for a loan, and thus sucking up to the minority groups voters, then bankers and investment firms as Fanny and Mac jumped the bandwagon and by heavily lobbying and supporting (with money) their Democrat politician backers ensured no interference. When big capitalist institutions suddenly and unusually back the leftists alarm bells should ring.

Now those policies of artificially raising the living standards of people in America who by work and financial merit did not deserve it just to score voters, is bringing the whole world in deep economic troubles and is now forcing tax payers in Europe to help bail out the American economy and European financial institutions who have invested in the rotten American lending project called the Sub primes.

In my country we are used to send millions and millions to 3 world country's in an effort, to give people who are to idle to work and Governments more intent on waging war on their own people, money to waste and put away in secret offshore accounts, that America now has been added to that list of Banana republic beneficiaries must be a great shame for normal Americans.

That this country with all its wealth have been unable to properly care for all its people with medical care, jobs and reasonable housing without resorting to dubious financial scams, is so much more surprising since all American politicians always proclaim they are World Champions in everything, maybe it is time they try to climb down from the much to high horse and look outside their own duckpond to maybe learn how it can be done. ( There actually exists capitalist country's with free high quality medical care for all, free education, and without vast desolate crime and drug ridden ghetto areas everywhere, but where all the people enjoys a relatively high living standard and the wealth is more evenly spread and this without being the slightest bit Marxist or Communist.)

I don't mind if America asks for my tax money to help in the fight against World terrorism or Dictators that need to be disposed of, and I am personally grateful they lead the way, but I resent to have to indirectly support American house owners just as much as they would resent to pay for my European Mercedes that I could not afford to buy.

<h2 class="page-title">IBD: Carter More to Blame for Financial Crisis Than Bush or McCain</h2> By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)

September 20, 2008 - 16:29 ET

• 
  
• 
  

Much as Bush-hating media members conveniently ignore historical events that led to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, their current finger-pointing at the White House, John McCain, and all Republican politicians for the collapse of the financial services industry lacks any honest assessment of decades-old legislation that laid the groundwork for today's problems.

In particular, 1977's Community Reinvestment Act which required banks and savings institutions to make loans to the lower-income areas in the communities they served.

Despite how integrally tied the current crisis is to this bill enacted by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter, no major media outlet other than Investor's Business Daily and National Review Online mentioned it during last week's market meltdown.

Going against the grain was a highly-informative editorial by IBD Thursday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gary Hall, photo courtesy About.com):

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier.

The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window.

In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race

.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992,

Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans

. [...]

Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies

. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was. [...]

In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not hav

e. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market

.

That's how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off.

From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008

.

Readers are strongly encouraged to review this entire fact-filled piece to not only better understand the roots of today's financial crisis, but also to get a sense as to just how absurd media accusations of this all being Bush and McCain's fault are.

That said, from 1989 through 1995, I managed branches for two savings and loans: Imperial Savings, which got taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation during the S&L bailout, and; Great Western Bank which eventually was purchased by Washington Mutual.

The pressure to comply with CRA was astounding, especially at Great Western as it was expanding throughout the country. Its ability to acquire other institutions was directly related to its CRA rating.

With this in mind, IBD's views concerning this matter are spot on raising a very important question: if the role of news media is to inform the public, why does a LexisNexis search indicate that as this crisis came to a head last week, its connection to CRA, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton was almost completely ignored?

Would such a revelation make it difficult for Obama-loving press outlets to point fingers at George W. Bush and, more importantly, John McCain?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

Edited October 4, 2008 by larvidchr

[hardy1943]

Now that has got to be the mother of all posts....

1) Democrats are fiscally conservative, Republicans grow government insanely and spend like drunken sailors.

4) People are, as always, easy to fool.

Especially concrete sequential mind-types who memorize inputs and engrain information deeply. These are the easiest to brainwash. They think it, authorities state it, therefore questioning is without warrant.

Well the last 20 years this has proved true.

Ignoring a Newt Gingrich anomolieAnd many of Gingrich's cronies

got canned for illegal graft or similar things... Not the clean hands people for sure.

Clinton left a huge surplus and Bush trashed it in record time.

Leaving 10 years of debt to clear up,

and no end in sight of frosting on the debt cake too.

Regan left a HUGE deficit. It eventually got whittled down.

People have been blinded by republican rhetoric

and religious conservatism, and ignored the horrors they perpetrate.

Then the Dems inherit a totally disordered system and get blamed for

tax and spend to correct the mess.

I find it quite blindered when people say 'the two parties are just the same'.

You MUST be kidding. They both suck, but in quite different ways.

Bush has upped the ante considerably

and even tries to do it more within a month of the election.

Nothing to lose, screw McCain, let's make a bundle for the boys.

There is plenty of blame to spread around and it would be nice with some balancing against the "fruitcake Moore" and other one sided views.

I am not surprised to see Democrats screaming how they want protection for the mortgage holders in the rescue packet after all they are according to some the real responsible behind this mess, forcing the banks to lend money to ethnic minority groups and other poor Americans who under normal circumstances would not qualify for a loan, and thus sucking up to the minority groups voters, then bankers and investment firms as Fanny and Mac jumped the bandwagon and by heavily lobbying and supporting (with money) their Democrat politician backers ensured no interference. When big capitalist institutions suddenly and unusually back the leftists alarm bells should ring.

Now those policies of artificially raising the living standards of people in America who by work and financial merit did not deserve it just to score voters, is bringing the whole world in deep economic troubles and is now forcing tax payers in Europe to help bail out the American economy and European financial institutions who have invested in the rotten American lending project called the Sub primes.

In my country we are used to send millions and millions to 3 world country's in an effort, to give people who are to idle to work and Governments more intent on waging war on their own people, money to waste and put away in secret offshore accounts, that America now has been added to that list of Banana republic beneficiaries must be a great shame for normal Americans.

That this country with all its wealth have been unable to properly care for all its people with medical care, jobs and reasonable housing without resorting to dubious financial scams, is so much more surprising since all American politicians always proclaim they are World Champions in everything, maybe it is time they try to climb down from the much to high horse and look outside their own duckpond to maybe learn how it can be done. ( There actually exists capitalist country's with free high quality medical care for all, free education, and without vast desolate crime and drug ridden ghetto areas everywhere, but where all the people enjoys a relatively high living standard and the wealth is more evenly spread and this without being the slightest bit Marxist or Communist.)

I don't mind if America asks for my tax money to help in the fight against World terrorism or Dictators that need to be disposed of, and I am personally grateful they lead the way, but I resent to have to indirectly support American house owners just as much as they would resent to pay for my European Mercedes that I could not afford to buy.

<h2 class="page-title">IBD: Carter More to Blame for Financial Crisis Than Bush or McCain</h2> By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)

September 20, 2008 - 16:29 ET

• 
  
• 
  

Much as Bush-hating media members conveniently ignore historical events that led to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, their current finger-pointing at the White House, John McCain, and all Republican politicians for the collapse of the financial services industry lacks any honest assessment of decades-old legislation that laid the groundwork for today's problems.

In particular, 1977's Community Reinvestment Act which required banks and savings institutions to make loans to the lower-income areas in the communities they served.

Despite how integrally tied the current crisis is to this bill enacted by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter, no major media outlet other than Investor's Business Daily and National Review Online mentioned it during last week's market meltdown.

Going against the grain was a highly-informative editorial by IBD Thursday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gary Hall, photo courtesy About.com):

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier.

The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window.

In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race

.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992,

Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans

. [...]

Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies

. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was. [...]

In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not hav

e. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market

.

That's how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off.

From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008

.

Readers are strongly encouraged to review this entire fact-filled piece to not only better understand the roots of today's financial crisis, but also to get a sense as to just how absurd media accusations of this all being Bush and McCain's fault are.

That said, from 1989 through 1995, I managed branches for two savings and loans: Imperial Savings, which got taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation during the S&L bailout, and; Great Western Bank which eventually was purchased by Washington Mutual.

The pressure to comply with CRA was astounding, especially at Great Western as it was expanding throughout the country. Its ability to acquire other institutions was directly related to its CRA rating.

With this in mind, IBD's views concerning this matter are spot on raising a very important question: if the role of news media is to inform the public, why does a LexisNexis search indicate that as this crisis came to a head last week, its connection to CRA, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton was almost completely ignored?

Would such a revelation make it difficult for Obama-loving press outlets to point fingers at George W. Bush and, more importantly, John McCain?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

All I can tell you ...........It was ANGLO SAXON GREED at its finest by all the FAT CATS!!!

[maxman71]

One can only, fervently, hope that the Thai politicals and business power brokers don't make a run on the banks, scurrying to get their money, as that would leave the rest of Thailand with a total bank account of 324 B and, unpaid bills of some 456 Billion !

I sold my house in California back in mid-2005, because I saw this happening back then. I don't know if you all know what was going on back then, and up until early 2007. People with no jobs, no, income, no assets and bad credit were getting loans to buy houses. All they had to do was sign the papers; no income verification, no credit checks, no job verification. No joke. People were borrowing against the paper value of their homes to buy SUV's, big screen TV's, etc. People were thinking that if they had to sell their homes due to a job loss, etc., they could do so easily and still make at least 10% as they believed home prices would keep going up. Now it's time to pay the band.

And, before you blame Bush for everything (I didn't vote for him), do some research and you will find that it was Clinton back in the early 90's who cooked up the idea that if he gave loans to low income folks who couldn't qualify, they would behave better and become better citizens. His admin ordered Fanny Mae (the gov't sponsored mortgage underwriter) to extend loans to such folks. Fanny Mae has been a tool of the Democrats for years to enact their pet projects and siphon $$ from in exchange for lax laws that govern them. Clinton's plan was a grand Social Engineering Experiment gone horribly awry. So, there is plenty of blame to go around; Bush kept the party going.

[Ground Engineer]

One can only, fervently, hope that the Thai politicals and business power brokers don't make a run on the banks, scurrying to get their money, as that would leave the rest of Thailand with a total bank account of 324 B and, unpaid bills of some 456 Billion !

I sold my house in California back in mid-2005, because I saw this happening back then. I don't know if you all know what was going on back then, and up until early 2007. People with no jobs, no, income, no assets and bad credit were getting loans to buy houses. All they had to do was sign the papers; no income verification, no credit checks, no job verification. No joke. People were borrowing against the paper value of their homes to buy SUV's, big screen TV's, etc. People were thinking that if they had to sell their homes due to a job loss, etc., they could do so easily and still make at least 10% as they believed home prices would keep going up. Now it's time to pay the band.

And, before you blame Bush for everything (I didn't vote for him), do some research and you will find that it was Clinton back in the early 90's who cooked up the idea that if he gave loans to low income folks who couldn't qualify, they would behave better and become better citizens. His admin ordered Fanny Mae (the gov't sponsored mortgage underwriter) to extend loans to such folks. Fanny Mae has been a tool of the Democrats for years to enact their pet projects and siphon $$ from in exchange for lax laws that govern them. Clinton's plan was a grand Social Engineering Experiment gone horribly awry. So, there is plenty of blame to go around; Bush kept the party going.

I read somewhere that was Bush's doing!

[nickh]

BLACK MONDAY - How Many More Can Thailand Take.

Asian stocks plumb depths on a wave of selling

Nikkei ends at lowest since Feb '04; Sell-off greets Shanghai after holidays

By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch Last update: 6:02 a.m. EDT Oct. 6, 2008

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/stoc...D-C7ADCA0F2E06}

[desertrat]

I'm off to Makro to buy up all their rice (brown of course)

[OlRedEyes]

So, here we are: unless we have buried gold bricks, we face losing house, job, savings &/or pensions. Even if the current bailouts work, that will only incur more debt, so making the next financial crash even bigger.

Frozen methane gas in the Arctic is defrosting. This is the beginning of runaway global warming – The End.

If the first two don’t get us, my paper today forecasts that the earth’s resources will run out by 2050 (& now for the sports results - - - - ).

Our present political system has failed us spectacularly. It is rotten & incompetent from top to bottom (dynamic young Barack is proving as effective as a limp dick in a knocking shop). Either we replace it with a real democratic system – a revolution – or as Tom Lehrer used to sing, “We’ll all go together when we go”.

Nature is hard but fair. Species too dumb to adapt to change go extinct.

Sad but true. We're past 'culling the herd' stage. We're to the point where the herd itself is about to be culled. In geological terms it's a second away. Climate change affects Thailand and all the world, and over-arches the financial tectonic shift we are doomed to.

Good post but it will not find the deaf and blind who need to wake up and see the forrest from the trees.

In the mega-cut&paste there was this reference to the fact that millions dying in a pointless war was much less important than average-joe's bank balance being affected.

This is true of the dumbest species ever to inhabit this planet. Witness the number and length of threads just here on TV re the financial crisis, against 1 (only) inane thread re the mother of all crisis, global warming. I don't even post in there, what's the point? People are too shortsighted (even the self-styled 'intelligent' ones that are so concerned with the markets - and we wonder how 'intelligent' people can believe in religious hocus pocus) to see anything until after it has run over them.

Sadly, my estimation of the human race is forced to fall daily. As a species we richly deserve to become extinct.

Edited October 7, 2008 by OlRedEyes

[animatic]

Tis too true.

No species as invented more ways to kill or disable

more members of it and all other species,

than the human species.

And seems in no headlong rush to stop this stupidity...

[OlRedEyes]

Someone was arguing that what we have seen on the markets is a 'lurch', not a 'nosedive'. I agree totally. If it was the nosedive, the US admin wouldn't still be scrambling around to save the market, trying to put together an acceptable rescue package. it would be over. They'd be looking at a recovery stimulus package. It ain't over by a mile. The nosedive is yet to come.

NOW we're into the nosedive

Parachutes anyone?

[britmaveric]

Great time to invest - only need to figure if things will go lower or not.

[Bizz]

Someone was arguing that what we have seen on the markets is a 'lurch', not a 'nosedive'. I agree totally. If it was the nosedive, the US admin wouldn't still be scrambling around to save the market, trying to put together an acceptable rescue package. it would be over. They'd be looking at a recovery stimulus package. It ain't over by a mile. The nosedive is yet to come.

NOW we're into the nosedive

Parachutes anyone?

Can not say for sure yet if we are at the end of the V THAT'S Timing who knows when we will reach the end of the V.

Nikkei now at 7840

Asx down 330

Dow fut down 3%

I belive if you buy now you will have to wait at least 5 years to see any real return

[OlRedEyes]

Someone was arguing that what we have seen on the markets is a 'lurch', not a 'nosedive'. I agree totally. If it was the nosedive, the US admin wouldn't still be scrambling around to save the market, trying to put together an acceptable rescue package. it would be over. They'd be looking at a recovery stimulus package. It ain't over by a mile. The nosedive is yet to come.

NOW we're into the nosedive

Parachutes anyone?

Can not say for sure yet if we are at the end of the V THAT'S Timing who knows when we will reach the end of the V.

Nikkei now at 7840

Asx down 330

Dow fut down 3%

I belive if you buy now you will have to wait at least 5 years to see any real return

Better to go to casino and put all your money on 0. Buying now is a reckless gamble. We're heading into a long period of economic disaster.

[richabb1]

Some bloke said...

"THere are many reasons for the strength of the US economy, and consumption is only one aspect. US workers are the most productive in the world, for example, and their agriculture is among the world's most productive."

Maybe this productivity has something to do with the massive subsidies that the farmers receive from the US gov? It's these kinds of handouts that have been controlling the agri' markets giving an unfair advantage for years!

I would have to disagree with that groper. Research the US farm act. You will find it is not a broadbased agro subsidy handout like you think. In fact you will find most of the funds are distributed into the southern cotton states and not mainstream agriculture. You will actually find the masive food surplus in the US is a result of innovation and creativity and not being satisfied with the present yield. Much the same as the Aust or NZ and somewhat UK farmer mentality.

In these difficult times, I believe that one of the bright sides that the US nation could consider is that its ability to feed it population. This is real security and as importatant as defence spending. So on the subject of agri subsidies, there are still some in Europe who remember famine (post ww2) and that is why lets say French governments do continue to pay farmers to be there - to maintain agriculture technique.