Nope, “quickly.”

I have no contempt for the man, but he could have chosen some better words there, for certain.

I guess only the fascist bush-backing boot lickers do…

I agree that government action of some sort, probably on a massive scale, is going to be necessary to fix the problem. I just don’t think doing it in a rush, and without oversight, is a good idea.

Suddenly the financial giants found themselves unable to borrow money and also susceptible to hedge fund short selling, both legal and illegal (”naked” shorting, where a short trade occurred without initially holding the stock). Suddenly the mortgage industry found itself revising lending practices, back to reality where loans were only given to low risk borrowers. Suddenly financials were unable to lend to businesses, as their leverage dried up. Suddenly financials found themselves unable to borrow short term to fund continuing operations. Suddenly McDonalds could not borrow to expand businesses. Suddenly Bear, Lehmans, Fannie, Freddie, AIG were caught in liquidity propblems requiring them to go bankrupt and cease operations. While the world can live without iced coffee from McDonalds and even without high risk mortgages, having no investment brokers, no mortgages, no insurance would cause a complete destruction of the US financial system, followed by the rest of the world.

Yes, this was caused by the government changing rules (from the Carter 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, to Clinton change in how banks are scored for permission to open new branches, to the Bush SEC cancellation of the short-trading uptick rule, to failure of the SEC to police naked short sales, to mortgage brokers making lots of fraudulent mortgages and securities firms marketing mixed tranches of good and bad mortgages that never could be valued realistically, to home buyers thinking a 50 year interest-only mortgage in CA or FL was a good idea during housing bubbles….

But in the end, if you don’t want to lose $5 TRILLION of valued securities worldwide, while closing perhaps another $10 TRILLION of businesses overnight, while destroying 20% of the US jobs overnight, and throwing us into a depression worldwide with the likely world war that would follow as failing countries lashed out for survival, then perhaps strong government action is indicated.

The interesting thing is that if done properly, the US government can make money on this deal, just like it will on the Bear-Stearns loan support, the Lehman deal, the Freddie, Fannie, and AIG deal (which as an example loans money at LIBOR + 8.5% and gains the feds an 80% stake in the company, which will be resold to the public at a profit later). That private equity would not step up to do this (other than a few sovereign wealth funds that bought large amounts of equity in some financials without being able to fix the underlying problems) is obvious, and obviously because the underlying problems were caused by the nature of the regulation and oversight of the financials by the feds.

The feds are finally in the process of cleaning up the mess they caused. It will cost money up front, in an inflationary manner, but will produce a profit at the end, and will result in a more sound US economy than we have had for the past year, as about 25% of the value of our econonomy has evaporated.

this is stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich, with no apparent quid pro quo in the “plans” i’ve seen so far. i’m at a loss to think of a political party, platform, or philosophy that could be used to support it, or whose supporters ought to be cheering this on.

Saying “no” to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

What amazes me is that the same idiots who engineered this situation are the ones in charge of the cleanup.

So “no” I don’t have any confidence whatsoever in the bailout.

Could Islamic jihadists have done more damage to America? Should the Bush Doctrine not apply here– hunt them down and destroy them before they have a chance to do more damage? Instead we’re comtemplating giving them even more power and money (or more accurately, we’re letting them take more power and money). I think another wing should be built down in Guitmo for these people, only this time with real torture, you know, depriving them of satellite TV and soccer balls.

The real problem isn’t that we can’t accurately price them so much as it is that whatever price they are worth isn’t a much as what they already have in them.

That is to say if I have $100mm invested in a security it doesn’t much matter if the real price is $40mm or $50mm. I’m fantastically upside down either way.

The problem I have with the bailout is that it defies logic.

A. Market has a problem in pricing mortgage backed securities and so cannot sell them.

B. Government is better than Wall St. at pricing these things?

C. Completely illogical.