posted
I am angry. I am THOR angry. Why is the Government giving away loads of free cash to losers and skipping out on the American people? What ever happened to the idea that "Give people more money and they can have more to spend to keep the economy going?"
Lets say that as long as they are giving money away they should take around $180 million of the $700B and give directly to U.S. citizens? After all, the amount they are using for bailout is an estimate. We could have a nation of nothing but millionairs. Since that money would actually be spent, the government could tax everyone in a higher bracket. They could get lots of the money back. With everyone now able to buy in Wall Street then it would be saved. Forget the middle-man who got us in the crisis in the first place. I want my share of Uncle Sam's free goodies.
The most depressing, and revealing, is that the Democrats are all in this just as much. Yes, those "people's party" proclaimers are on the side of *shock* giving money to big business. Then again, they are fans of the big government take over of private enterprise. Who were the sour grapes on this? A few lone Republicans - not that the rest of them don't disgust me at this moment.
I want my share of the money pit pie. Frankly, there are some people who need it more than me. A bailout windfall could save lives.
Politically I think those banks and lenders should go under with no bailout at all. Some say the repercussions would be world wide depression. Good. We need a few of those at times to humble us into sanity and take greed down a few notches. Besides, this bailout isn't saving anything. It is just keeping the economy afloat for a few more years or months and shifting the consiquences on the government. In turn, of course, that means the consiquenes will shift to ALL Americans stuck with the bill they cannot pay. The only people who should pay, besides the speculative lenders, are those who bought houses they couldn't afford because they listened to oil salesmen bankers.
Honestly, I could have millions of dollars. You could too. Now if I could only convince the Government that I need a bailout with no strings attached.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
ok, your right. Still, the idea is that they are giving money to those who don't diserve it in my estimation.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
How much was the tax rebate in advance thingie earlier this year? $300? $600?
Edit to add: Using TomD's figure of 200 million tax payers and $600, we get a rough estimate of the bailout costing roughly 5.8 stimulus bills. Put another way, according to the New York Times, that gives you about 3.5 years of an Iraq War.
Or 1.5 times the total federal debt of Canada. Huh.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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No, you couldn't. $700 billion spread across 200 million taxpayers isn't enough to cover more than a couple mortgage payments.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Threads: If they gave the money directly to U.S citizens we would each end up with a couple thousand.
I bet my school raises tuition by exactly that amount.
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I want to know if I'm understanding this situation correctly: people didn't pay their mortgages, so some banks failed, which caused more banks and insurers to fail, which has left the largest banks with a liquidity crisis. So the proposal is to give the largest banks a lot of money from the Treasury, because if they go down, we all go down. Is that a fair summary?
If it is, I'm a little confused. Don't the folks at the bottom of all this still have to pay their mortgages? And they pay taxes too -- are we about to send a portion of their taxes to their banks -- who certainly aren't going to forgive any part of their debt?
quote:The only people who should pay, besides the speculative lenders, are those who bought houses they couldn't afford because they listened to oil salesmen bankers.
It's almost certainly impossible to restrict who "pays" to those people. If there's not a bailout, people who do not fall into either category will almost certainly pay something. It's possible that they will pay significantly less under the bailout.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Lets say the government gives every citizen who owns a house in the U.S. 300,000 dollars. That should be the amount that would cover the highest of the average home costs. How much "bailout" money (assuming 1/3 of U.S. citizens own houses). How much would that total?
Just for fun, lets say the government is able to give every U.S. citizen $500,000 each adult. How much money would that total?
To be fair and honest, I hate math and have always been close to illiterate when it comes to numbers. I am honestly wondering how much it would cost to actually give money away since the Gov. seems to be doing that right now.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
For some more fun statistics, the US National Debt clock http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ a total debt (I'm unclear if this is just federal or not) of 9.85 trillion or $32,340.73 USD per person in the US, converted this gives $33,603.058 CAD
quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: ... So the proposal is to give the largest banks a lot of money from the Treasury, because if they go down, we all go down. Is that a fair summary?
If it is, I'm a little confused. Don't the folks at the bottom of all this still have to pay their mortgages? And they pay taxes too -- are we about to send a portion of their taxes to their banks -- who certainly aren't going to forgive any part of their debt?
IMHO, (not an economist) the bailout is more than giving the banks money. The liquidity injections that have been going on for months now to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars over the world, thats giving the banks money.
The bailout is borrowing money via the sale of US treasuries to buy up packaged and bundled loans gone bad.
As for the rest, yes they will have to pay the same mortgages, pay the same taxes, and no debt will be forgiven under the current proposal, although amortization periods might be lengthened(?) lowering monthly payments.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:I bet my school raises tuition by exactly that amount.
My university raised tuition this semester by 12%. They also increased fees.
College has never been easy to afford, of course, but I think it's getting harder and harder.
I intend that a significant portion of my take-home pay when I begin working (as in more than 50%) will have to be spent on sending my oldest to college and saving up for the other three.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I am still waiting for my scholarship check. $1300 sitting in my bursar's account that I can't get to. I am sitting here trying to figure out how to pay all my bills and they are just sitting on my money. So far, they have just blown me off whenever I try to find out anything (they'll e-mail me the moment it is ready is where we are at- but no clue why it is taking them a month and a half to be ready to give me my check).
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
Occ, it would cost $2.5 trillion to give every home owner in the U.S. $300,000. That said, I'm pretty sure that's still cheaper than the Iraq war.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
One other thing to consider is that while the government is buying bad debt, it's buying it dirt cheap. Assuming this injection of money stimulates the economy, the government may wind up making a huge windfall once the value of that investment goes up.
It would be really ironic if the U.S. Government manages to pay down the national debt because of a crisis caused by mismanagement. Bush could come out of this looking like a hero. (Reminds me of how the Simpsons got their dog)
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:One other thing to consider is that while the government is buying bad debt, it's buying it dirt cheap.
I haven't seen any indication that this is necessarily going to be the case. Paulson's plan was, as far as I could tell, not looking to pay current market prices for the mortgages. The $700 billion number they came up was not pegged to any metric, but instead a number they chose because it sounded big.
In the bill they just voted down, there wasn't, I don't think, any provision guaranteeing that the debt would be bought cheaply. The best indication of this was that there was some weakly worded provisions about how, if the mortgages weren't making money for the government, that the finanical firms would have to make up for it, in some unspecified way.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Dear Investment Banks, Since the bailout bill to buy your mortgage-backed securities did not pass, I am willing to step up to purchase your toxic securities to get them off your books and inject you with much-needed liquidity. In exchange for all of your firm's mortgage-backed securities I will provide you with one $20 bill. This is a new, crisp $20 bill which has not yet been creased or wrinkled from overuse or long stays in a billfold. I understand that this may not be as favorable of a price as you were hoping to get from the government, but with this $20 you can buy a lot of ramen noodles and that's more than you can say for most of your assets at the moment.
Note: I only have one $20 bill on me, so this is a first-come, first-served offer.
posted
It's possible that the members of Congress will take this to mean that trying to ram a bill through and be overwhelmed with a horde of protests from their constituents who were supposed to just shut up and take it was a bad idea.
Regardless of what bill they end up passing, they owe the public a full explanation of why they are doing this and what they expect it to accomplish, not just fear mongering and Bush-style empty assurances.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:OBAMA: There's no doubt it will affect our budgets. There is no doubt about it. Not only -- Even if we get all $700 billion back, let's assume the markets recover, we' holding assets long enough that eventually taxpayers get it back and that happened during the Great Depression when Roosevelt purchased a whole bunch of homes, over time, home values went back up and in fact government made a profit. If we're lucky and do it right, that could potentially happen but in the short term there's an outlay and we may not see that money for a while.
posted
There are a lot of stories out there about the political upheaval that's going to come over this. Political analysts are saying this could give what is already shaping up to be a nation in the beginnings of class warfare a huge, huge push.
I'm a little worried about that, but the next election is two years away, and a lot will change in that time. If it stays bad, Congress could experience a seachange. It's impossible to say, but I'm extremely impressed by the response Congress is getting from constituents.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
So, now the question is - are we voters and our representatives so angry that we'll let the whole ship sink rather than bail out the ones who have been steering it unwisely?
Hopefully, Congress can come up with a solution - but unfortunately for them, I think the average Joe understands justice better than he understands economics, and probably won't be too happy with any bailout.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:If we're lucky and do it right, that could potentially happen but in the short term there's an outlay and we may not see that money for a while.
You'll notice the very not certain nature of the statements he is making here. The only people who I've seen claim that this is almost definitely going to happen work for the Bush administration, which has lied to me far too much to have any credibility.
If there were strong indications that the people planning this bail out were structuring it in such a way that there was a very good chance that we'd come out of it making money or even breaking even, it would go a long way towards answering my concerns about it.
Right now, I am not seeing this and, from what I can tell, if they did bargain for these things, it would be bad for the big money men, so I don't expect it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
"Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones of coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but that suffers a sea change, into something rich and strange."
Pet peeve: people using "sea change" as if it means sweeping changes.
Not your fault, Lyrhawn, everybody and his brother has been using it that way lately.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Unless Congress can convince the average American that the bill is A. Not a bailout, and B. That what happens on Wall Street will hurt them too, possibly catastrophically, then I don't see support turning. That's the problem with having an electorate so often taken advantage of for their inability to either understand or to try to understand, depth and nuance. When you drop a complicated issue on their doorstep, they show an unwillingness to dig deep to find out all the possible endgames and how it could effect them.
I suspect that if this wasn't sold as a Wall Street bailout package and was instead sold as a measure to save taxpayer retirement funds and jobs, the movement against this thing wouldn't be quite so bad .
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: So, now the question is - are we voters and our representatives so angry that we'll let the whole ship sink rather than bail out the ones who have been steering it unwisely?
Hopefully, Congress can come up with a solution - but unfortunately for them, I think the average Joe understands justice better than he understands economics, and probably won't be too happy with any bailout.
Pretty sure that the ones who have been steering also have all the life rafts. Fancy, luxury life rafts.
ETA: I have always understood "sea change" to mean deep profound transformation rather than broad change.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Right - unfortunately, I suspect the people who'll be stuck if the ship goes down are the ones most likely to think justice is being served by refusing to bailout the rich.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: "Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones of coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but that suffers a sea change, into something rich and strange."
Pet peeve: people using "sea change" as if it means sweeping changes.
Not your fault, Lyrhawn, everybody and his brother has been using it that way lately.
Yeah, I used to actually try and correct people for it too, but I think it's one of those things that has entered the vernacular with a different meaning than its origin. It's not like there are a ton of people out there using "sea change" in its originally intended form. In it's original form, from what I've read and understand, it merely meant a change that took place at sea, or because of the sea, it was hydrologically related. Now it's used to mean either like kate said, a transformative change, or as many use it, to denote sweeping change. I've used it both ways. I've never heard anyone ever use it in reference to water.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: Republican House leaders may have signaled the new strategy for the party in a news conference moments ago when they blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) for a partisan speech that, they argued, tanked the possible passage of the legislation.
McCain followed that lead in a statement by senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill," said Holtz-Eakin. "Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome. This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country."
posted
Since there are so many cross-threads, I'm reposting my comment from the AIG thread here: The whining about how Pelosi's speech undermined the vote is annoying. Vote for or against the bill because of its merits. Her speech didn't suddenly add amendments to the bill. Now they're back to bickering about how "partisan politics" caused the failure of the bill. People who let her speech change their vote are more to blame than her. It shows yet again how many of them care less about the actual nuances of the bailout plan and more about posturing.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I wondered where the term "sea change" came from to begin with. Of course I've heard it as "seed change" and several other mispronunciations/bastardizations too.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Republican House leaders may have signaled the new strategy for the party in a news conference moments ago when they blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) for a partisan speech that, they argued, tanked the possible passage of the legislation.
McCain followed that lead in a statement by senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill," said Holtz-Eakin. "Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome. This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country."
Ah, finger pointing. It brings a small amount of amusement to my life. A small amount.
Wow. What an absolute load of horse-puckey. Given that the Democrats rallied more than half their number in support of a bill that Bush favored and the Republicans failed to do so, about the best one can say is that some of the GOP are once again allowing the whole mess to burn because they feel someone slighted them on a plane. And McCain personally said he'd work to rally the Republican votes! You'd think they'd have the decency to blush.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: But a top aide to Mr. Boehner said it was Democrats who had done the political posturing. The aide, Kevin Smith, said Republicans revolted, in part, because they were chafing at what they saw as an attempt by Democrats to jam through an agreement on the bailout early Thursday and deny Mr. McCain an opportunity to participate in the agreement.
Because it is all about him. And he just couldn't get to Washington any sooner and phone calls just don't provide photo ops.
Like most people, I have pretty mixed feelings about this whole thing, but the democrats aren't the ones holding things up.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yeah, I used to actually try and correct people for it too, but I think it's one of those things that has entered the vernacular with a different meaning than its origin. It's not like there are a ton of people out there using "sea change" in its originally intended form. In it's original form, from what I've read and understand, it merely meant a change that took place at sea, or because of the sea, it was hydrologically related. Now it's used to mean either like kate said, a transformative change, or as many use it, to denote sweeping change. I've used it both ways. I've never heard anyone ever use it in reference to water.
The sea-related sense is archaic. I've never before heard it used to mean sudden change; just a really big change, like going in the opposite direction from before.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I just checked the balances on my pension fund. I've lost considerably more during the last quarter of economic instability than this bail out would have cost me.
I get the feeling the most Americans have so little understanding of how these things are connected that they are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
scholarette, you don't have an email listed, but if you'll email me, I might have some suggestions.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The Rabbit: Well, from that perspective, an American with an investment in a domestic S&P500 fund such as SPY http://finance.google.ca/finance?q=AMEX%3ASPY could have lost more than $2000 with as little as $31,000 invested *today*
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