Curing the financial crisis

[Doug Kerr]

Carla and I have decided what we think the "financial bailout" package should contain.

The government should extract our mortgage from the hands of the servicing entity and lose it.

There should be no problem with the latter - we know they have that skill.

This would then be well worth the perhaps $5,000-$15,000 the overall bailout package will eventually cost us in taxes.

 

[doug anderson]

Somebody said somewhere that the 700 billion would break down into 3.5 million per American. Giving us each that amount would cause us to buy things and therefore stimulate the economy.

It makes about as much sense as everything else their suggesting. It's uh, win win.

 

[Doug Kerr]

Somebody said somewhere that the 700 billion would break down into 3.5 million per American.

Well, that would be true if there were 20,000 Americans.

Was this taken from the interview between Sarah Palin and Jessica Simpson?

Now, it would amount to a little over $1 M per Alaska resident. It would be almost $3.5 M per Alaskan household.

On the other hand, if there were 700 billion Americans, it would be $1.00 each.

It is estimated that today the population of the US is about 305 M. If we consider this to include 300 million "Americans" (a term, conveniently, without a unique definition), then $700 G would be about $2300 per American.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[doug anderson]

Well, that would be true if there were 20,000 Americans.

Was this taken from the interview between Sarah Palin and Jessica Simpson?

Now, it would amount to a little over $1 M per Alaska resident. It would be almost $3.5 M per Alaskan household.

On the other hand, if there were 700 billion Americans, it would be $1.00 each.

It is estimated that today the population of the US is about 305 M. If we consider this to include 300 million "Americans" (a term, conveniently, without a unique definition), then $700 G would be about $2300 per American.

Best regards,

Doug

Aw shucks.

 

[Richard McNeil]

Well, that would be true if there were 20,000 Americans.

Was this taken from the interview between Sarah Palin and Jessica Simpson?

I think it was taken from the latest interview with Biden!

 

[Asher Kelman]

Doug,

1% increase in taxes for 10 years would cover the $700 billion and give ~ $600 billion as reserve. There is no "survival of the fittest" natural selection if no creatures are allowed to succumb. The USA economy is massive and complex, made up of efficient and failed components. . This bailout is a psychological shortcut trick to steal our money and contrary to the principles of free market. Loans, jail time, bankruptcy and weeding out of fraudulent loan-making would boost the markets as long as the central banks maintain liquidity, which they can do

Giving unlimited power to the sleaze-bags who caused the mess in the first place is akin to sending an asthmatic virgin to a Hells Angel drug camp for the summer!

Asher

 

[Kathy Rappaport]

FSLIC and Other Antiquities

Seems that no one remembers all the bank problems that were in the late 70's that recurred in the late 80's into the 90's. I guess they forgot about all the Junk Bond Mess of 1990 where Lehman Brothers went under and let's not forget about the American Savings/Lincoln Savings and Charles Keating.

Bank deregulation started way back in the 70's. Rules created in the crash of the 30's were no longer seen as necessary. I am sure you have all heard of the Glass-Stegal Act. Time to bring it all back and get the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions to be accountable to the people and the government. We used to have some pretty stiff lending guidelines in banking. All out the door. Any reputable banker wouldn't dream of doing a mortgage loan without the buyer having 20% or MORE down. So we inflated housing prices and loaned 110%. Then we as a people went CHARGE! and started living on credit making some great economic strides - a good boom of spending and growth. But, it was false.

So now that credit is drying up, we will be forced to live within our means again. We will all be paying for the things that we spent on the last 15-20 years including overpriced real estate. I think it will take a good visionary leadership at all levels for our country, a nation committed to giving 100% towards econcomic recovery including lots of effort and hard work by it's people.

 

[doug anderson]

Doug,

1% increase in taxes for 10 years would cover the $700 billion and give ~ $600 billion as reserve. There is no "survival of the fittest" natural selection if no creatures are allowed to succumb. The USA economy is massive and complex, made up of efficient and failed components. . This bailout is a psychological shortcut trick to steal our money and contrary to the principles of free market. Loans, jail time, bankruptcy and weeding out of fraudulent loan-making would boost the markets as long as the central banks maintain liquidity, which they can do

Giving unlimited power to the sleaze-bags who caused the mess in the first place is akin to sending an asthmatic virgin to a Hells Angel drug camp for the summer!

Asher

Right you are. And anyone whose eyes were open could see it happening a long time ago. For me to believe in a government solution to ANYTHING any more would mean starting with a few arrests.

 

[doug anderson]

Seems that no one remembers all the bank problems that were in the late 70's that recurred in the late 80's into the 90's. I guess they forgot about all the Junk Bond Mess of 1990 where Lehman Brothers went under and let's not forget about the American Savings/Lincoln Savings and Charles Keating.

Bank deregulation started way back in the 70's. Rules created in the crash of the 30's were no longer seen as necessary. I am sure you have all heard of the Glass-Stegal Act. Time to bring it all back and get the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions to be accountable to the people and the government. We used to have some pretty stiff lending guidelines in banking. All out the door. Any reputable banker wouldn't dream of doing a mortgage loan without the buyer having 20% or MORE down. So we inflated housing prices and loaned 110%. Then we as a people went CHARGE! and started living on credit making some great economic strides - a good boom of spending and growth. But, it was false.

So now that credit is drying up, we will be forced to live within our means again. We will all be paying for the things that we spent on the last 15-20 years including overpriced real estate. I think it will take a good visionary leadership at all levels for our country, a nation committed to giving 100% towards econcomic recovery including lots of effort and hard work by it's people.

Kathy, it has occurred to me more than once that the destruction of the economy under Bush is INTENTIONAL in order to return to pre New Deal conditions. The rich will make out like bandits and the rest of us will be standing in line at the soup kitchen. There will be no social programs, pensions etc.

D

 

[Kathy Rappaport]

Let me see, In 1978-1979 I worked for a bank that let the entire lending department go - 100 branch outfit. That was under Jimmy Carter that it started. Then after it was George Sr in office during the next bout. The last 10 we've had the Clintons and Bush Jr. All this time we've had Democrats in power in Congress.

But the real problem lies with all of us. Banks were selling and we were buying.

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Doug,

Kathy, it has occurred to me more than once that the destruction of the economy under Bush is INTENTIONAL in order to return to pre New Deal conditions. The rich will make out like bandits and the rest of us will be standing in line at the soup kitchen. There will be no social programs, pensions etc.

Ya think?

Best regards,

Doug

"Older than Sarah Palin - and by a lot"

"We can see the Moon from Texas"

 

[doug anderson]

Let me see, In 1978-1979 I worked for a bank that let the entire lending department go - 100 branch outfit. That was under Jimmy Carter that it started. Then after it was George Sr in office during the next bout. The last 10 we've had the Clintons and Bush Jr. All this time we've had Democrats in power in Congress.

But the real problem lies with all of us. Banks were selling and we were buying.

We haven't had democrats in power in congress for a while. Only recently did they gain a majority, and not enough of a majority to really be powerful. Also, Bush vetoed almost everything they wanted. Most of the recent financial damage was done on Bush's watch. The Republicans didn't do anything but rubber stamp everything for Bush. Now, this is without starting on his various criminal acts....

 

[Colleen Vermillion]

The problems we are seeing today are a direct result of a road to hell being paved with good intentions. Way back when, President Clinton had a noble goal of everyone in the US owning their own home. Apparently he mistakenly assumed that the problem was the evil banks not giving poor people loans, so he loosened some of the regulations and pushed his housing initiative forward. At the same time we had a huge influx of money from foreign banks because interest rates were rock bottom, so banks went a little nuts with handing out the loans, everyone assumed the only place housing prices would ever go is up.

The next thing you know there are derivatives of derivatives based on mortgages given to people with no verifiable income. The housing market tanks because the easy credit has inflated housing prices way beyond what they should be (My parents were offered $450,000 more than they paid for their house um maybe 8 years prior) and there are a bunch of hedge funds and others holding paper on property worth 50% of what they loaned people for it. The real estate speculators walk away from the loans with a shrug saying "go ahead and foreclose, I'm not paying for it" and the banks are left holding the bag for the unsaleable property AND the taxes.

President Clinton was very sad to discover that the reason most poor people rent is because they don't have enough money to invest in a house. Even if they can make the loan payments, when the value of the house goes up, they can't afford the increased property taxes because most places here have this ridiculous idea that your house can somehow be worth more than someone paid for it. If President Clinton wanted to do something worthwhile regarding home ownership, he would have figured out some way to prevent retired folks from getting taxed out of their paid for homes.

Yes, I know all the cool people hate Bush reflexively, but y'all seem to have goldfish length memories. Bush proposed regulating Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae back in 2003 according to the NY Times From that article:

Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families.

I guess that on didn't get rubber stamped.

It depresses me that US politics has been reduced to verbal bomb throwing and hateful bashing. There's no intellectual discussion involving actual facts, it's all just name calling and aspersion casting. Anyhow, I just needed to vent. Proceed with the Bush bash-a-thon. It's not like actually knowing the facts is going to change anything. The bail out is going to happen because it's an election year and it is a law of the universe that no person shall go unpandered to in an election year. All the bad debt is not going to get cleared out of the market like it should, and we get to rescue everyone from their bad choices. I hope someone is planting more money trees.

-Colleen

 

[doug anderson]

The problems we are seeing today are a direct result of a road to hell being paved with good intentions. Way back when, President Clinton had a noble goal of everyone in the US owning their own home. Apparently he mistakenly assumed that the problem was the evil banks not giving poor people loans, so he loosened some of the regulations and pushed his housing initiative forward. At the same time we had a huge influx of money from foreign banks because interest rates were rock bottom, so banks went a little nuts with handing out the loans, everyone assumed the only place housing prices would ever go is up.

The next thing you know there are derivatives of derivatives based on mortgages given to people with no verifiable income. The housing market tanks because the easy credit has inflated housing prices way beyond what they should be (My parents were offered $450,000 more than they paid for their house um maybe 8 years prior) and there are a bunch of hedge funds and others holding paper on property worth 50% of what they loaned people for it. The real estate speculators walk away from the loans with a shrug saying "go ahead and foreclose, I'm not paying for it" and the banks are left holding the bag for the unsaleable property AND the taxes.

President Clinton was very sad to discover that the reason most poor people rent is because they don't have enough money to invest in a house. Even if they can make the loan payments, when the value of the house goes up, they can't afford the increased property taxes because most places here have this ridiculous idea that your house can somehow be worth more than someone paid for it. If President Clinton wanted to do something worthwhile regarding home ownership, he would have figured out some way to prevent retired folks from getting taxed out of their paid for homes.

Yes, I know all the cool people hate Bush reflexively, but y'all seem to have goldfish length memories. Bush proposed regulating Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae back in 2003 according to the NY Times From that article:
I guess that on didn't get rubber stamped.

It depresses me that US politics has been reduced to verbal bomb throwing and hateful bashing. There's no intellectual discussion involving actual facts, it's all just name calling and aspersion casting. Anyhow, I just needed to vent. Proceed with the Bush bash-a-thon. It's not like actually knowing the facts is going to change anything. The bail out is going to happen because it's an election year and it is a law of the universe that no person shall go unpandered to in an election year. All the bad debt is not going to get cleared out of the market like it should, and we get to rescue everyone from their bad choices. I hope someone is planting more money trees.

-Colleen

Good intentions? These people are thieves. According to my information, the average CEO makes between 48 and 85 million dollars a year. Also, the practice of lending at one rate and then suddenly kicking the interest way up used to be called usury. The credit card companies are very experienced at it, and the mortgage companies have followed suit.