While I have been offline there seems to have been a new form of government invented? One where our “leaders” (who used to be known as representatives) decide that We The People are now some sort of lending institution, lending money to bad lenders who badly lent money to bad lenders to buy bad loans….or something like that? Does this mean that We The People now own the housing industry? Or just the part of it that loans money to people who can’t pay us back? Billions of dollars seem to be going …..somewhere, and as far as I can make out, all I get in return for loaning somebody billions of dollars is ….trillions and trillions of dollars of liability? That can’t be right, can it? I am confused.
Since this is supposed to be my government, as one of We The People, I just found out that I owe someone 11.3 trillion dollars. I don’t recall borrowing 11.3 trillion dollars. As I look around me, I don’t see any new shiny toys or anything, no new car or new house, but apparently I bought something, because I am deeper in debt than I was a month ago. Somehow. Because someone somewhere says so. So that someone else doesn’t lose money?
Hmmm, does this mean I now own a bunch of houses? Just like John McCain?
Or does it just mean I now own a bunch of bad debt that I have to pay back? Do I get stock in Merrill Lynch now that I own it? What DO I, the taxpaying citizen get out of this deal? I mean besides having to pay interest.
Is the economy now better? Are there now more jobs? Is this how we get health insurance? Will the price of gas go down? Do I get a fucking toaster?
When was it, again that I told MY government that they could go into the business of buying some corporations massive debt that I have to pay for? When did this become the purpose of our government again? I am particularly surprised, because I thought the Republicans wanted government to stay out of business, but now the government is supposed to own businesses? Or do we just own the debt and liability. What happens when the businesses I now own start making a profit? Do I get the money?
Or am I just doing this out of the kindness of my heart? Can someone in authority please let me know?
Speaking of which, do my representatives in this representative democracy represent me any more, or do I now talk to some corporate officer if I don’t like the way my government works any more, which by the way, I don’t. I am confused. I guess my government is a business now and not a government, so do I go to a voting booth or the Customer Service window? I am confused.
The excuse seems to be that the economy was going to collapse if I didn’t sign on to pay for the extra trillions of dollars of liability and billions in outright debt, is that right? Because MY economy already done collapsed. But I guess it just got worse? Now, just like my government, I owe even more money, that I don’t have, to ….someone? A government, a business, an Army…as a taxpayer I now own all three I guess? I have paid trillions of dollars for them, though apparently I get no say in what they do. I just get to pay for all of it. Even though I have no money.
Oh one last question, now that I am in business….Do I have to wear a tie?
I am confused!
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it’s a damn good thing these folks have proven they know what they are doing!!!
Otherwise I might be worried that the whole damn thing is spinning out of control and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it!
…the next administration might have to make changes in this country before it becomes the next administration.
If the rich people would pay back the money they got in tax breaks from the Bush years, there’s your $700 billion.
… from Meteor Blades over at the Orange, wherein he quotes equally great post by devilstower entitled Three Times is Enemy Action:
And the mechanism is the same … Bush yelling “hurry, hurry, the sky is falling,” and the Congress having to play catch-up as the criminal activity is pushed through.
We can all be rich if we choose to believe we are and vote Republican.
i too am confused!
why are the people who made the bad decisions in the first place, still making the decisions to come to a ‘solution’?
aren’t these the guys who changed the rules, who wanted free-economy? well part of that is making decisions that will sustain your business….and going under when your decisions are wrong and your business flounders and fails.
problem is they gleefully wrote those new bankruptcy laws…which might actually apply to themselves now(!)…and they don’t like it…. wah!wah!wah! bail us out!
i say Fuck You. NO BAIL-OUT!!
night in Vegas. And, no, I don’t want two weeks in the middle of July in Vegas.
…to our neighborhood.
So don’t have to bother yourself with thinking about what to do about all this they’ve decided to not let you do anything about all this. They have your best interests at heart.
And so you don’t hurt your back picking up a stack of book to find out why, Hank Paulson, George Bush, and their friends have all been de-regulated, to get Congress off their backs.
How do you like that invisible hand, hey? Ain’t it great?
And the tie? It’s for tying your hands.
…you did buy it. We all did. We lived modestly well, even the poorest of us with some small recourse, while 25 thousand people a day have starved to death. And now it’s due. To new masters, who will be no more compassionate, sane or aware than we were, as a polity.
I would definitely suggest a tie. Unless of course you can sell whatever you do internationally more effectively sans socks in a t-shirt.
The federal government creates a fund of $700 billion of your dollars. The fund is used to bailout any investment “bank?” worldwide that holds mortgage paper of indeterminate value. So investors are now protected …Uncle Sam is on the hook for all those potentially bad loans.
The mortgagee (you, me, our friends and neighbors) continue to have our mortgage obligations. But, if the terms and conditions of the mortgages that the collective “we” are responsible to pay cause a rise in payments that “we” cannot afford to pay …defaults will ensue. “We” will be foreclosed.
As more and more monthly payments increase (those dastardly terms and conditions, fine print that we signed when we got our mortgages), more and more foreclosures will take place in your neighborhood …homes going into foreclosure will be relinquished to the bank …that entity in the sky that holds our respective mortgages.
As more and more foreclosures happen in our collective neighborhoods …more and more homes are turned-over to the bank …the banks will conduct fire sales. Home buyers or more likely other investors will purchase the houses at the below market “fire-sale” value. Thus, the value of homes that some of us are fortunate enough to keep will decline in value. If you are able to afford your monthly mortgage payment, you need content yourself in the knowledge that you are making a large monthly payment on a mortgage that may be twice the size of your current home value.
So bottom line …your government spends your tax money to the tune of seven hundred billion dollars…. Foreclosures will continue to grow because of the interest escalator clauses built into many home mortgages…. With foreclosures in your neighborhood sharply rising, the value of property in your neighborhood (including your house) will nose-dive.
If you are not foreclosed, plan on remaining in your house forever …you are unlikely to see the value reach the face value of the mortgage in your lifetime.
If you don’t own a house/mortgage, the rents will probably come down. Content yourself in the knowledge that you will never be able to afford to buy a house in your lifetime.
George W. Bush’s Ownership Society …kind of has a hollow tone to it!
to accept you new place and roll in society. It is your job and your patriotic duty to accept everything the “dear” leader says and to willingly surrender to the “will” of those who are your superiors! You don’t deserve anything, what you do have you should assume the position and allow whatever they require to be allowed since they are the “chosen” and you are not. If you were “chosen”, you’d be them! So eat it and like it, you should be glad that they allow you to have as much as they have deemed you entitled to!
Hey, I just got back from vacation and can’t BE-lieve this mess! I may have to retake my vacation just to make sure I had one and am not dreaming!
Well, here’s some appropriate analysis to help straighten out some of the “confusion” on behalf of any of us.
Read the entire article Text & Analysis of Treasury’s Financial-Bailout Proposal to Congress; It’s Not $700 Billion! It’s $11Trillion, 315 Billion!
“The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely. We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House. The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.”
William Greider
http://www.thenation.com/doc/2…
PS; Please remove that disgusting ‘bipartisan’ image at the top of the page.
It`s very confusing.
… the answers to your “do I now own” questions are, yes partly, and that’s precisely what they want to avoid happening.
The AIG bail out was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was moronic to allow general insurance firms to get into the business of insuring dubious financial transactions, but that was where “the revenue” was, so AIG and other big general insurers wanted in, so it was allowed. But allow AIG to fail, and the productive sector is really screwed.
And they looked ahead and saw all the under-capitalized firms ready to sell junk assets at fire-sale prices and then go bankrupt when they became insolvent with not enough high quality assets to raise money to keep going.
And bailing them out like AIG would have ended up with the government owning all these companies on behalf of We The People.
SO the Bush Administration said, “can’t let THAT happen”, and came up with this BS idea of Cash for Trash, where, yes, we really truly would get to own what the companies do not want, paying inflated prices for it so that the firms can recapitalize with windfall gains at the public expense, and with the added benefit (from the Bush perspective) of adding so much public debt that the Republicans can run against the “fiscal recklessness” of an Obama administration actually doing anything.