My last thread here before I run off to play with coins in Long Beach for 3 days. A 5 day weekend away from the rat race, the 70+ hour work weeks and politics. Vacation and play. If you have been reading my posts, you all know I need a freakin break. This has got ZERO national media coverage ( suprised? ) and deserves a mention before I go so as to stop the Obama/Biden lies tying McCain to the current fallout of the mortgage lenders. In 2005, McCain co-sponsored with another REPUBLICAN, " The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 " This is 3 years ago folks. Stopped in congress by the democrats who are now trying to use this as an issue. The Reid / Pelosi congress is now blaming the Republicans for this fallout. 2 TWO 2 of Obama economic advisors sat on the Countrywide board, and the #2 benificiary of Fannie/Freddie lobbyist dollars from 1988 to 2008 is OBAMA ( yes !! in 3 years he has climbed to #2 on the list ), ( the top 6 are Democrats ) I have included a link, READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH if nothing else http://www.govtrack.us/congress/rec...x002Fmcrmx002Fms20060525-16.xmlElementm0m0m0m I'll bash John McCain when deserved, and have his back as well. EDIT for spelling and add picture of Obama with his TELEPROMPTER at a rodeo !!!
I would like to know how much the big wigs at these companies made last year...it seems they get to benefit from profits in the good years...and in the bad years they dont have to suffer the losses....so glad my tax dollars (and my childrens childrens tax dollars) could help out...along with everything else we are paying for...
Government stepped in and bought up nearly 80% of AIG. Great, now the socialists are taking over business. Government does not belong in business, and business does not belong government. That is a central tenet of pure Capitalism. And the fools in AIG, Bear Sterns, Lehman all get away with their grandiose golden parachutes and suffer no repercussions for their crimes. At least Uncle Sugar will step it and prop these crooks up.
Cant acualy read the report Jack this is what I get when I click on the link GovTrack.us Is Temporarily Unavailable GovTrack.us is currently having some down time. Either the website is undergoing maintenance, or the site was shut down because of an error or high load. Please try reloading the page in just a few moments. If the problem persists, please bookmark this page and return in a few hours. Thanks for visiting! But I do know that Obama said he did not hold McCain responsible for the current situation and he did hold the Republican economic policies responsible. This has been on the cards for quite some time, I mentioned the Morgage crisis on the forum previously and was told it wasnt that bad!! Well now the Chickens are coming home to roost, The companies got very greedy and took stupid risks bought books of sub prime morgages at inflated prices! You can not blame any one person for this but you can blame the wheelers and dealers who have played and lost. I believe that Countrywide was bought by Bank of America, here is a list of there recent aquisitions Since 2004, BofA has purchased FleetBoston Financial Corp. for $47 billion, credit card issuer MBNA Corp. for $35 billion, Chicago's LaSalle Bank for $21 billion and mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. for $4 billion. And now Merrill Lynch for a cool $44 billion (or maybe a bit less, depending on BofA's stock). A rather worrying article for you concerning Countrywide http://www.dmnews.com/Countrywide-notifies-customers-of-data-breach-with-direct-mail/article/118035/
The whole crooked and rotten structure is going to crumble when the door is slammed Business and government do not ever learn. They repeat, repeat, repeat. And the problems snowball. If this current situation isn't checked, it has the possibilities of snowballing into something that would make the Great Depression of the 1930's look positively benign. It is all driven by arrogant greed.
I love how the government rushes in to save these large companies and the CEO's that make millions who mismanaged them, I am sure, not a one of them will sacrifice a dime of that money they shovel in, they will walk away with the cash and we will bail them out, as if we arent funding war and shoveling money to help out every crap hole nation with their hand out and cant take care of the problems in their own country...where is America in all this? they ask when a disaster hits...they dont ask where their own government is, they know the deal... Columbia has cocaine growers? Lets give them some money to help, the corrupt inept government there needs help, got a problem with Islamic terrorists? BO!! that scares me as it should, lets spend a lot of money there in Pakistan, certainly lets spend a few billion in Israel, no problem, we'll borrow the money from China, its not like its real or anything. I love how people get mad at entitlement programs that go to the poor in America because possibly some of it is being misspent and those people should get jobs and support themselves...while our nations pays out billions to corrupt nations all over the world (just cry terror, we will dump money on your country) we would rather spend billion helping Iraqis, most of whom hate us then our own people....oh yeah...TERROR!!!. But when the small business on the corner folds, he is **** out of luck, he will pay with his life savings, debts he cannot pay, etc...It must be good to be on the inside like that... 'hey, I made millions last year mismanaging a large company...it failed, but the government will bail us out and I wont lose a dime of my personal assets, that I made running the company into the ground....thank you american tax payers!!' Keep worring about all those all important issues, keep trying to find out if Obama cleans his toenails, its important!!Continue to champion men who are not in any way your advocate...they are fat cats who tell them what they want to hear... as they rob us blind every damn day...If anyone thinks McCain was not the original spin master taking in loads of special interest money while turning a blind eye to such things, your are just being fooled as much as those Obama lovers who fool themselves into hinking he offers change as he stumps for the democratic party line...same old story...they wont have me as one of their cheerleaders...I wont defend Obama any more than I would defend McCain, they are cut from the same cloth, they offer no change from the same old and offer little to no real solutions, just empty rhetoric. They and people like them are gragging this nation into the fire, and like the CEOs, they dont care as long as they can can point a someone else and they still have a fat bank account.
While I do aree with what you are saying Dru the problem is if AIG was allowed to fold the repercusions would be devistating for the US (Never mind the rest of the globe) they underwrite most of the motor inssurance, health insurance, travel insurance, home insurance in the US never mind the banks that they insure against bad debt or the insurance on hollywood movies they also own rather a lot of aircraft that are leased by airlies and it goes on and on!! The Fed has given them a loan for a couple of years at I believe 11+% interest and they also now own 80% of the companies assets as collatral, they let Lehmans go to the walll and I agree with that decision but they coudnt allow the same to happen to AIG. And yep the Fat Cats should be penalised for allowing this to happen in the 1st place.
Other companies will will fill the gap...sure a crash will hurt but maybe the US needs to hurt, to feel the repercussion of what they are allowing to happen through compliance...maybe people will then expect more from our so called 'leaders' and will look closer at what these robber barons are doing instead of trying to get on the boat and play along. I dont think they should get bailed out...I am sure a thousand smaller companies would be more than happy to try to fill the gaps and maybe THEY will not decide to rob the US people of their money...I pay a lot of money in insurance...that is I pay a lot of money to the filthy rich and make them richer JUST IN CASE I might need help....because the law says I must (nice racket)...then I am going to pay MORE in taxes just because those filthy rich idiots screwed up...and then I will also pay for all those people who didnt pay those filthy rich idiots, when something happens to them...we cant let them suffer can we? let them lose homes? or maybe things will never change Maybe we should feel how it is to throw cash around like its pretend monopoly money. Without doubt, some fat dudes in suits and 1000 dollar hair cuts should feel what its like to lose it all....maybe as we hurt, we will also rethink a lot of government policy and actions that have drained our economy and start stripping these scumbags of power and money...let them see how it is to suffer. Dont put them in jail...just take everything from them and everything they make in the fututre, leave them just enough to survive.
How about prosecuting these crooked fools that ran these companies into the ground and then a government bailout? It never fails to amaze me how white collar crime is treated like a slap on the wrist, it is not a big deal. It shows that the USA, whilst the prognosticator of morals and ethics in business, is just as unethical as the countries it slams for such activities. And more so, because it does it on a much larger scale.
to be honest, I think the best thing would be a tax strike, stop funding the crooks. At one time, not that long ago, this nation had little to no debt and the people paid little tax (no tax at one time)...without the money they cant throw it away.
And how would that be possible? What with the Patriot Act and all Big Brother controls they have on our banking activities in the USA, you cannot even fund a high priced prostitute now(ask former NY Governor Elliot Spitzer) without the government knowing. You sure cannot hold funds from them, they will get them one way or another, right out of your bank account.
Oh, and if you try to hide it from them, they will just come and get it. Buy a lot of gold, or sell a lot of gold, guess what, that is reportable now.
I've seen some good analysis here from Drusus and scottishmoney. DeOrc also added some relevant research on BofA's buying spree. That's all well & good, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. Let's start with Phil Gramm (R-Texas) who wrote and co-sponsored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. This legislation basically reversed all the regulations put in place after the crash of '29 which were intended to prevent another such crisis. Why do you think the Repubs are such big fans of corporate deregulation, privatization of national resources and 'smaller government'? Because it's their access key to the profits. Granted there were Dems who also profited from this, but the point is that the Repubs engineered it. As the years have passed, and with Repubs in control of the White House and Congress for six of the last eight years, they have been systematically dismantling any oversight or regulation that they feel interferes with their goals of garnering as much power and money as possible. This is evident in the explosion of increasingly ridiculous & idiotic mortgage products like Stated Income/Stated Asset loans (aka liar's loans), No Income/No Asset loans, and the ever popular Interest Only loans. I suppose I should interject a little personal background here. (Gasp! Gypsy has a background?!? Heaven forfend....) I've spent 25+ years in the mortgage industry in a variety of capacities. Suffice it to say that I've been living & breathing this crap for way too long. My resume could be snapshot of the mergers, takeovers, and more recently, the demise of companies who's names are making headlines around the world. I've watched this unfold from the inside out and was predicting this meltdown over five years ago, which is why my spouse and I decided to distance ourselves, as much as possible, from as many credit vulnerabilities as we could manage. Now, back to Mr. Gramm. This is the same fella who, along with his wife Wendy, were instrumental in seeing that deregulation of the energy industry was enacted – that would be in return for massive donations from that same industry (specifically Enron). [Source: Phil Gramm’s Enron Favor] The one person in the Enron scandal whom congress is not likely to subpoena is its own revered Phil Gramm, the retiring Republican Senator from Texas. Gramm and his wife, Wendy, have tight links to Enron, Wendy being a director and Gramm the pusher of legislation that assisted the company during its troubles last year [ed -2001]. ~snip~ In an apparent response to a 1992 plea from Enron, Dr. Wendy Gramm, then chair of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, moved to exempt the company's energy-swap operation from government oversight. By then, the Houston-based Enron was a major contributor to Senator Gramm's campaign. What does this have to do with the crisis in the financial markets? Well, it establishes a pattern of purposeful intent to manipulate legislation with an end result of lining their pockets and those of their cronies. This is the infamous 'Enron loophole' and which set the stage for the huge increases we're experiencing every day at the pump (and anything else that relies on petroleum bases products). This is the same Phil Gramm who was co-chair of the McSame campaign and had to lay low after he sneeringly accused Americans of being 'whiners'. It's not a secret that McSame also floated the possibility of Gramm being given a Cabinet position if McSame somehow manages to gain the top Office. And these are only two of the tentacles reaching into the Treasury that have shredded our financial systems and threatened not only the middle-class, but the entire global market as well. McSame keeps crowing about how 'our economy is fundamentally strong', even after the past week's events have proven him completely wrong. He has revealed his utter disregard for those who have to shoulder the burden he and his cronies have imposed on us - 'us' being every citizen who has to fork over our hard earned income to pay for their multiple houses, excessive lifestyles, and beloved tax cuts. Oh, and before I forget, there is someone who's looking to block at least some of that greed. Did you know there is a call to block the golden parachutes the heads of Fannie & Freddie were expecting? News reports indicate that the chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will stand to reap millions of dollars in severance payments when they are removed from their posts. Under no circumstances should the executives of these institutions earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources. I urge you immediately to clarify that the agreement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac voids any such inappropriate windfall payments to outgoing CEOs and senior management. When Congress granted the Department of the Treasury the authority to step in and rescue Fannie and Freddie, we explicitly included a provision that gave the new regulator the authority to block "any" payments made to CEOs that were "contingent on the termination" of their affiliation with the organization. It would be a gross violation of the public trust to fail to use this authority now, while American taxpayers and American homeowners, already struggling in a weak economy, are being asked to accept an historic intervention to rescue these institutions. [emphasis mine] Gee, I wonder who would be looking out for the taxpayer? I'm sure you've guessed that it would be Sen. Obama. Only the coming days will show who the Fed is looking out for in this specific matter. I have a gut feeling that I'll be shown, once again, that the current Administration (and the Repub leadership) will not hesitate to shove their hand in my wallet to finance this insult to injury. And to think some folks want four more years of this BS. Taking a cue from Caribou Barbie, I have to say, 'Thanks, but no thanks!”
