7000 FREAKING DOLLARS A YEAR ????////?????

The WSB radio voice just said this bailout will cost every taxpayer $7000 a year. This means my husband and I are now "investing" $14,000 a year MORE into America's future. Somehow I don't think I'll be getting any quarterly statements showing me how my investment is growing and how much I'll have socked away for when I'm too used up to work anymore. And when that time does come, some schmuck in Washington is going to be telling me how living broken down with not enough support in abject poverty - eating toxic chinese cat food in the basement of an abandoned house is "for the good of the country".

How many times have we bailed their asses out in my lifetime alone "for the good of the country" ? Yeah, well someone needs to explain to me what the heck I'm getting out of it because I'm just not seeing it. We all know damn well, if the world as a whole STOPPED BAILING THEIR ASSES OUT - they would figure out how to get and stay rich without depending on bailouts every 15-20 years.


DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS.

100% of sane people interviewed agree.

Scarey too.

and we have lost.

Damn.

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edit your post unless you want Agent Mike to remind you of how hollowpoints are illegal.

Green box Remington bought at walmart

Armour piecing is illegal
exploding and incendiary is illegal

Hollowpoints are not

:) :hug: Did you see the PBS program last night on Yankie Stadium? I watched and am not a ball fan, but enraging nevertheless, how it was funded by tax payers who won't be able to afford to attend a game, while the richies have private elevators, entrances, parking and bourgeious clubhouses to park their asses. Fucking waving in the taxpayers faces in front of God and everyone. They are stupidly bold! :D

I understand the frustration, but you're coming very close to making a threat . . .

but I see the mods have chosen to see it your way by deleting my post

who breaks into their homes, but we shouldn't show our anger toward a man who stole our futures, and our children's futures out from under us.

I don't wish death upon anyone, but I sure hope Obama holds this White House accountable.

:argh:

anymore ;) So I can't help you there.

At least under Obama's plan the ultra-rich will pay the majority of that $7000, which only seems fair since they are also the ones who caused the problem in the first place.

and stick the next generation with the bill.

middle class! Why SHOULDN'T they pay a little of it back now that the Ponzi scheme has gone bust?

what happens is, after there's nothing left to steal, the perpetrators flee with all the loot, and everybody who got ripped off is very sad and angry. Your thoughts assume that there is some kind of "rule of law" or "social contract" or something.

Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news...

and left their companies circling the bowl. It's plain old robbery, and now we're throwing taxpayer dollars after it so the greedy bastards can pocket them, too. The looting of the treasury by the rightwing moneyboyz is nearly complete. Next stop: welcome to the third world, America.

:hi:

Why, our abandoned housing stock is probably the best in the world! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

I freaked them out at work because i told them i was thinking of quitting my job. They were asking me why? I told them because i did not want to have to pay my tax dollars for this. We can't get national health care, but we can bail out the crooks. We can't fund education as it should be, but we can loot the nation to pay for greedy business practices. How will we ever be able to pay for any of the things our nation really needs?

I have half expected this collapse for sometime. I was told a couple yrs ago that there are people that wish to cause an economic crash of huge proportions. The reason stated was the only way the American people could be convinced to accept the concept of a North American Union. Collapse our economy, and then crow, and scream the only way to save us is to join with Canada, and Mexico. By killing our economy it makes it an easier sell to absorb Mexico's toxic economy. I never fully bought it, but thought it possible. To me it looks more possible than ever.

little people, correct? Or as it is otherwise known,... a tax increase. Am I correct in this assessment?

I am not sure how it breaks down. Maybe some of that is figured in raises never gotten, the added increase in the cost of living, etc. However they figured it, you can bet it's your patriotic duty to have a lesser life than you could have if the elite weren't using you and yours as an ATM every 15-20 years. Ugh.

:dem:

We bail out all these behemoths who merged and acquired and got "Too Big To Fail" -- !!

Well let's not let any companies get "too big to fail."

REGULATION curbs those abuses. We need more regulation of these pirates.

:eyes:

the amount proposed would come to about $2,333 per person ($700,000,000,000 = $2,333 * 300,000,000)

but that's not the "cost" of the program, that's just the funding involved. the actual COST depends on how well much interest the funding earns and how much is eventually recovered or written off.

the actual cost is likely to be far less than the funding amount. you buy a mortgage, you gets SOMETHING back. it may not be everything you put into it, but even if the homeowner walks away and you have to foreclose, and you get a sucky price for the house, you STILL get something back. plus, there's no way the bailout will involve paying par for the mortgages.

these subprime mortages are probably worth something like 70 cents on the dollar. the problem is that without the bailout, there is no market for them. no one will buy them even for 30 cents on the dollar. so the fed will come up with a number, maybe 30 cents, maybe 50 cents, maybe 70 cents on the dollar. how much they buy them for and how well they perform determines the ultimate cost.

in theory, it's entirely possible that the bailout MAKES money for the federal government. i certainly wouldn't hold my breath, but the point is that the bottom line cost is likely to be far less than the funding amount.

for people like you. Or for people you advocate for. Hardly worth noticing. And for such a good cause. I mean, those swindlers made some bad bets, What's not to feel sorry for? I mean, for that kind of money there is hardly a more deserving charity. Poor poor Monsters. Hardly anyone understands how running out of human blood distresses them.

it's not a trivial amount for me or anyone "like" me, and i don't "advocate" for anyone.

i didn't even say whether i'm for or against the proposed bailout. in fact, as i understand the details (or lack thereof) of the plan, i'm opposed to it. i think the government needs to do something, but what they're proposing ain't it. i'm eager to hear what the democrats in congress suggest as alternatives.

also, there's a lot of blame to go around, and a lot of pain already has gone around to those who screwed up. the investment banks screwed up, the hedge funds screwed up, the pensions screwed up, the federal government screwed up, greenspan screwed up, and phil gramm screwed us all. oh, and those people living in houses secured with subprime mortgages screwed up as well, and pretty much for the same reason as everyone else -- they got greedy and overextended themselves in the hopes that a better tomorrow would solve their problems and leave them richer.


now, since you obviously have strong opinions, what's your superior suggestion? let 'em all fail and watch the crisis quickly spread as every company that tries to roll over its debt defaults, goes bankrupt, and puts a ton of workers on the streets?

and one way or another, everyone pays. this debt will still be around for today's infants' children to pay taxes on.
besides, income tax is hardly the only form of taxation. others pay through reduced services.

because "taxpayer", which presumably means merely federal income tax payers, is simply not the correct basis for figuring things.

the cost will be borne by everyone. you think they're going to put a surtax on the income tax to cover 100% of the cost and be done with it? hah! our children will still be paying interest on this bailout, and we'll all be paying higher mortgages and rents and more for imports and so on as a result.

i know people like to divide by the number of taxpayers, but it's rarely a good metric for anything. besides, it's insulting to people who aren't individual taxpayers. why should stay-at-home mrs. unblock and toddler mini-unblock not count? one way or another, they're paying, too.

The draft is proposing buying "mortgage related assets" - Collateralized Debt Obligations and other esoteric derivatives for which the market cannot establish a value (inability to value CDOs was the whole spark that started this mess). The CDOs seem to have evolved into a practice whereby financiers are able to move liabilities off their balance sheets - this (currently worthless) paper is what I suspect is being referred to as "mortgage related assets". I don't think they plan to use taxpayer funds to buy actual mortgages.

mortgages are swiftly pooled and carved into cmo's and other derivatives products. the mortgages are owned by special purpose entities that pass the cash flow through to the various tranches of the cmo. there's no need to rescue the mortages themselves because the entities holding them are fine. they were created to just pass through whatever they took in.

it's the institutions holding the various tranches that are paralyzed by the evaporation of the secondary market in cmo's and other derivatives.

that doesn't really change the argument, though. the mortgages are not worthless, and the tranches downstream are not, for the most part, worthless. yes, some of them are literally worthless, but most of them have some notable value.

If the mortgage underwriters are essentially OK, does that not imply that the valuation mechanisms on the derivatives are somehow flawed to the point where confidence in them has collapsed? It seems to me that the entire mess is because the CDOs somehow allow debt to be shifted off the balance sheets and this has been leveraged to a point where the entities who bought the derivatives are practically insolvent. Since we have not been given specifics I haven't looked at the balance sheets of the affected entities but presumably they have been reporting solvent positions -- how come we are "days away from a complete collapse" now?

It seems to me that the real urgency of this matter is getting the funding secured before joe sixpack can actually understand what's going on.

to be clear, the mortgage underwriters are not fine. when these cmo's are created, the mortages are sold to special purpose entities. each of those entities is a special corporation that exists solely for that one deal. those entities are fine. the companies that created them are not, in part because they often retained at least one of the tranches themselves. how they valued those tranches, or what they did with them, led to the mess they're in now.

the valuation methods aren't theoretically flawed. they indicate a reasonable price that the tranches should fetch in the secondary market. what the valuation methods don't reflect is that there simply are no buyers for these products now that they've been declared toxic. no one would dare risk their job over it.

normally, if your model says it's worth 70 cents on the dollar, surely someone will offer 60 or more. but these days there are no buyers even at 30 cents on the dollar. someone actually could make a ton of money if they knew what they were doing, but no one wants to go to his boss and say, "hey, i think we should place a large bet on these subprime cmo thingies." the pat on the back if you're right doesn't justify the sure firing if you're wrong. that is, if you don't get laughed out of the office in the first place.

This rings true.

I think someone actually will make a ton of money off of this mess.

If the market can't or won't determine a value, then surely something is wrong with the models. Understanding ypur point that a credit risk analyst is not going to get a hearing from a corporate banker in the current climate, why can't the derivatives be repackaged into more palatable units and floated? If the derivatives can be realistically valued *at all* based on the underlying cashflows then SOMEBODY would buy them.

To me it still seems that something is not adding up, literally, and the US taxpayer is being asked to plug the missing number.

Isn't the problem really that the real liabilities have been removed from the balance sheets via the CDOs? If this is the case, how can we even approach the magnitude of the problem objectively?

Conversely, if the market simply needs a floor then the "bailout" makes sense, but that's what a free market should set in the first place if the commodity has any worth.

They earned their money by the sweat of their brow and they deserve to keep it!

How can you stand listening to WSB? i used to listen in order to get material for teaching my students about logical fallacies. i can't do it anymore. and there's really nothing on the left here either...

they play it 24/7 at work over the office speakers and since I work a variety of different shifts I manage to catch most everyone at some point or another. The only one that really makes me want to stab my ear drums out is Hannity. Geez what a stupid lying dishonest idiot. Boortz, I disagree with on almost everything but he's so funny and emotionally honest about what he believes in that I can handle it.

and add the $400 billion/yr. deficit and see what we've got.

7 Grand is probably a low-end number once all the bankruptcies and bail-outs are counted. Think of it this way...if you have any property or savings/investment, the bail-out on Friday probably saved you a good chunk of change...either in keeping your investments solvent or from a wholescale drop in home value/prices. The alternative would be collapsed markets where banks would become insolvent and the economy totally paralyized. Not a pretty picture either way.

Consider your bank statements as a "quarterly statement"...and what the government now does to recoup the losses and bring some sanity to markets that have long been a crap shoot. The government can't bail out all the corporations that are failing...and that shoe will drop after the election. For now, the can is being kicked...the big question is who do you want to handle what is to ensue...Senator Obama or the Camp Gramps lobbyists.

Our house has already dropped 165K in value in 12 months & yes, we NEED to sell it...

Good thing I'm far too poor to be a taxpayer.

I still hate this bailout with a passion, though. The disabled poor get to live on $7k a year while they want every American taxpayer to give an equal amount to Wall Street swindlers.

Oh goody, I was wondering when it would happen. You mention poverty enough and it's bound to happen.

Distribute the debt according the wealth. The 400 people who own 50% of America's wealth can pay the first 350 Billion dollars.