Well? Which do you prefer??

Side note: I find it terribly ironic that next to the pictures of people protesting the $700 bln bailout plan outside the New York Stock Exchange in the Wall Street Journal, holding signs saying "Bail ME out" and "Nationalize Healthcare, Not Wall Street," there are ads for Tiffany bracelets and cufflinks.

The Dow was down 777 points at the end of the trading day yesterday. According to the New York Times: "$1.2 trillion had vanished from the United States stock market."

Maybe if Paulson had packaged the bailout plan as $699 bln, it would have gained more traction. No matter how inequitable the vagaries of Wall Street were, that bailout plan would have gone a long way to protecting all of us from the punishment that is being meted out and will continue to be meted out by the market. We'll all pay, if not $700 bln in tax money for Americans now, it will come in the form of increased cost of living, fewer jobs, shrinking economic power abroad, and the continuing decline of American power in general.

In my opinion, any argument that the bailout would not have materially helped the average American misses the point that while propping up a failed and inequitable system may not be right, the alternative is going to be very bleak. Then again, T minus five before Freelancer and co. spout the preamble to the explosive end of "Fight Club" and gets some marshmallows ready for the economic apocalypse.

In all seriousness, though, what are you thinking/hearing about this? I'm in business school, so I'm totally surrounded by people with vested interests in Wall Street's resurrection to more or less the way things were and I'm also involved in a lot of international relations groups, but these are only parts of the picture that should be expected to have a particular outlook. I can't rightly grasp what the other sides of the argument are or how they're fleshed out, so if someone thinks otherwise than the doomsday, pro-capitalist stuff my professors and the press are preaching and can maturely articulate their point, I'd be very interested to read.

we're all dooooomed

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

I'm not saying that we can all pretend it doesn't exist and it won't, but wasn't the last stock market crash fueled mostly by people saying "OH NOES THE STOCK MARKET IS CRASHING!" and ended up with a self-fulfilling prophecy as people went hording their money and doing exactly the opposite of what would be needed to combat the crash? It just seems like I hear a lot more about it than actually seeing it.

Also, I prefer my Jep in whatever position makes Jep happiest! ....

Never gonna stand you up, never gonna lay you down, never gonna run around and hurt you. Never gonna make you cry. Never gonna say good-bye. Never gonna tell a lie, and hurt you.

It's a double-edged sword. The best thing you can do for the economy is keep your money invested. But in a market like this, you're almost guaranteed to lose some of it. People are selfish, so they horde everything they can to 'keep it safe', which only makes the problem worse.

Thankfully, this time around, we have the FDIC, so the money in our banks is actually backed up by the government. We won't lose everything is our local bank goes under.

I don't really care so much if it actually works, but I find it highly amusing this all comes about only months after the "stimulus package".

I'll stimulate your package!

Don't threaten me with a good time.

I've never met anyone who has had it lying down.

Maybe I'm missing out, but I've only ever seen Jepman stand up.

... You need to get out more if you haven't met anyone who had it lying down. I love having it lying down. (I'm lazy)

$700 billion. Seven hundred BILLION dollars. $700,000,000,000.

Where the **** does the United States Government have that kind of cash lying about?? Oh..we don't. Yay more deficit spending! Spend spend spend spend. Did Congress even THINK about how much they would need? Or did they just come up with some magic number that will appease the public? Seriously.

dalf - I'm pretty sure someone from the fed or the white house said they just picked a really large number.

Anyway, they shouldn't be just handing over money to fix the problem. It might work for now, but they need to figure out a way to prevent it from happening again.

Also, bail me out. I could use $700 billion.

Maybe they should divide the $700 billion up amongst the 150 million, or however many, taxpayers. :downs:

Soooo... I guess I have to start this thread? Didn't see one around on the first page, maybe I missed the original.

Does anyone else think this whole idea is insane? 700 BILLION dollars?

It wasn't designed to be $700 billion at once. Smaller amounts of money would be given at first to see if this plan was working.

And plus, in context of what the government did to end the Great Depression, it isn't "insane."

That is an awful lot of money, but it will cost us a lot more than that if there is not something done soon to get the financial sector out of the trouble it's in.

Yeah but the 'bailout' of the great depression was also used to create millions of jobs, very needed highways and interstates, as well as many other construction projects that still exist today.

I'm not completely against the bailout, I'm also not that well read on it, but I would like to see some good things come from it, not just saving companies that obviously don't deserve to exist in the first place.

THREADS MERGED

I should buy some canned food.

Wow... thread meshing.

yea I look like a weirdo talking about doing it laying down now in a thread title "Financial Bailout"

Against it completely (at least the current planned bailout of 700 Bill)

1. It will make our dollar even more worthless

2. Doesn't it seem odd that the government would be paying $700 billion dollars for something not even close that much?

3. These banks failed. Bailing them out would encourage their behavior again, especially since this is just a "we are writing off your debt". Let them fail. The entire crisis can basically be described as gambling. People and banks gambled, either by taking on mortgages they really shouldn't of gotten and couldn't afford, and banks tying themselves to other financial firms and not the mortgage themselves, spreading it everywhere. They lost. They deserve it. Now some people did get screwed genuinely probably. I wish there was a way to cost-effectively find them.

My plan would be jack up interest rates a ton, get the banks to fail, get a ****load of foreign investment due to the high interest rates (people are still ensured by FDIC, and I don't know many people who have more than 100k in their bank accounts), which then will raise the dollar back to a semi-good level. It's not fullproof, and there is no solution that will give us a easy way out. But I think getting the dollar back to a good level and getting foreign investment back up would be a good thing that we need right now.

well, in principle i am entirely opposed to bailing out wall st. banks who lent to people they should not have and people who took out loans they had no business taking out in the first place.
this whole mess is stemming from bad mortgages lent by financial institutions. the banks now have a whole buttload of "toxic assets" and are freezing up lines of credit. wall street is going belly up because everyone is panicking thinking businesses are not going to be able to take out loans when they need them and therefor will not be able to perform.
i say if the government is going to buy all these toxic assets and bad mortgages and bail out wall street, why not give the private sector a chance to fix it first. put the "toxic assets" up for sale to investors with a guarantee of no capital gains tax. if the govt. is going to buy these bad mortgages at a fraction of the price, offer the same deal to private investors first.
granted this may not work. but at least something would have been attempted as apposed to simply sucking our thumbs and crying till the government comes in and rescues us. ...also i would begrudgingly support government intervention as a last resort with strict oversight and regulations BEFORE a penny of the money is spent. [/endrant]

MONEY HAHA HA HA HA!

Naturally I'm against any legislature that has guarantee of no judicial review or revision for discussion. Good job, house, you scored a point by blocking such idiocy.

Also, it's childish to run to mommy and daddy to bail us out. Not enough struggle.

You mean by sending half the workforce off to die in Europe?

This isn't directly related but since it has to do with Star Wars and is relevant to some of the oft-discussed tangents that inevitably emerge when on this topic, and since Tatsuya Ishida is a genius, I will post it:



Also

This is all moot, since our overlords from the Fed gave banks 630 billion dollars two hours before the bill failed in congress. Bloomberg ran the story yesterday. It's nice to know that congress is there merely to pacify us while the oligarchs do as they wish. Where did the money come from? Credit default swaps, whatever that is. Sounds like tomfoolery.

No link == Lies.

I think the article is saying that the Fed gave banks $630 billion in cash reserves (ie for money that's not adequately backed by what's required by the reserve ratio) so that they would have that cash available for the hordes of people who will run in wanting it. The bailout is buying $700B in debt, which is giving banks money they didn't already have -- which is different.

Oh. Well I thought this crisis was about the credit market, not fractional-reserve banking practices.

I heard the FBI is investigating Freddie Mac for the banking crash

I do have to agree that bailing out the banks is a stupid idea, as the banks did this all to themselves. Not to mention that it would do nothing to help the people who are actualy in trouble.

But realy, the US has been headed for some of these problems for a while. I mean, the houseing bubble was always going to burst (and I just loved laughing at the realtors association guy who said the bubbe would never burst), and you only needed to look back at the internet bubble to realize it. The amount of people wanting to be donald trump and make money by merely buying, raising the value of, and reselling houses was also to great for the market to support, meaning that the people who bought the houses to live in were less likely to be able to afford the repayments.

Also, I love how some of your politicos are blaming Nanci Peloci's speech for the failure of the bailout. It seems that they don't realise the implications of blaming her speach, specificly, that it means that the people who were swayed change their minds easily, or that Pelosi is actualy good enough at pubic speaking to make people change their minds.

The thing failed because of how many angry Americans called their representatives, not some stupid speech from Pelosi.

which is my point.

I only said that there are politicians blaming Pelosi's speech.

See, what I don't get is that I would've thought that the Democrats would've loved to pass this bill, REGARDLESS of whether it would succeed or fail. Right now, the average American is just looking for the Fed/Gov't to do something (because they see the Dow dropping and think all hell has broken loose, their investments in danger, and they want the gov't to step in).

Democrats have majority of the House and Senate. When they pass this bill, they can claim at least success that they were the party who passed the bill and who have started the "road to recovery". You'd think that would get Obama some major election pointage.

Then when it fails, they can try and spin it like any administration would do. Win-win

I think that we, as a nation, need the wake-up call. Maybe we'll realize that we can't spend money we don't have, that we are fallible, and will make people think twice before they drop that 60k for that brand new mercedes--which happens to cost twice as much as they make in a year.

But that's just me.

EDIT: Buck, being condescending and widening the gap between republicans and democrats is the last thing we need right now. And for your information, Obama never supported the bailout--in fact, guess who did?

Actually, this bill wasn't very partisan. plenty of representatives from both parties voted for and against. The deciding factor here was constituency for once—probably because we're pissed.

More funnies (despite Barclay's being misspelled)

I agree with the thought that the banks need to take responsibility for their own problem. If I open a store, and it fails... I wouldn't get a bailout. Why should they? I know it will cause a bad ripple effect in the economy but sometimes people have to suffer for the better. MAYBE America will learn debt is a bad thing finally.