Tag: bailout

     Bankers in the basement,            

     Mixing up the medicine,

     I’m on the pavement,

     Thinking about the government.

     The pols in the empty suits,

     Acolytes of Abramoff,

     Say we got a deficit,

     Want to get it paid off.

     Look out kid,

     It’s something you did,

     God knows when,

     But you’re a parasite again.

     Better blink away the pepper spray,

     Duck back down the alley way,

     Your job creator master,

     To pay for his disaster,

     Wants ninety dollar bills,

     You only got ten.

     Obama comes fleet foot,

     Asking for our input,

     Talking ’bout transparency,

     Freedom and democracy,

     But taps our phones anyway,

     Get used to it, ’cause many say,

     They must watch us every day,

     Orders from the NSA.

     Look out kid.

     Look out, look out, look out.

You know what the problem is with America?

The poor don’t get just how great they have it.

I’ve been hearing this a lot lately; the basic thrust of the discussion is that all those cars, TVs, DVD players, refrigerators, and stoves that have found their way into the homes of the economic underclass are proof there’s really no such thing as “poor” in America.

If they were truly poor, the argument goes, well…think recycled corn.

And if the poor want things to get better, let ’em pull themselves up by their own bootstraps – and if they can’t, then let ’em rot, because that’s the best thing for the economy.

But I don’t buy all that, and by the time we’re done today, I hope to have given you a whole new perspective on how jobs get created in this country.

  While America was distracted with issues of guns, political rhetoric, and domestic violence, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe reached its next tipping point.

 Alan Wilde, head of fixed income and currency at Baring Asset Management, said: “The crisis is reaching another key phase with debt auctions this week. It seems unlikely that Portugal can avoid a bail-out.”..

 In a further blow to Mr Sócrates, António Bagão Félix, a respected former finance minister and rightwing politician, said on Monday that it was no longer a question of “if” Portugal would have to turn to the European financial stability facility, the EU bail-out fund, for help, but “when”.

  The cost to the country of high bond yields was increasing every day, he said. “The situation is unsustainable.”

 The European Central Bank was forced to intervene on Portugal’s bond market on Monday when investors came close to abandoning the country’s debt entirely. The yield on 10-year bonds reached a near high of 7.18%, a rate similar to that which triggered the bailouts of Ireland and Greece.

original post 22 September 2008

____________________________

That’d be roughly seven hundred billion dollars.

Yeah. $700 billion.

$700,000,000,000. heh.

  It may be the one-year anniversary of an amazing stock market rally, but economists are sounding rather pessimistic these days.

 A growing expectation of a double-dip recession is evident in a new poll of financial executives…the poll found more than half of financial executives predicting another downturn, and most expecting jobs recovery to lag into 2011.

 The predictions don’t end with just this poll. Nouriel Roubini is also warning of a second leg down, and even more disturbing is this report.

  Let me take you back to Christmas Eve, 2009. It was a time to wrap gifts for loved-ones. That’s how the Obama Administration felt about the financial industry when it lifted all caps in emergency bailout money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That means the taxpayer was on the hook for all losses at these two mortgage giants no matter how big the losses are.

   The move caused a slight stir, but never got the attention of the American public because the announcement was timed to coincide with the peak season of distraction. And so it was forgotten…but not by Fannie and Freddie.

  Once again, the Federal Reserve is going to come to the rescue of Wall Street. Once again, it will be in the name of helping out “us”.

 The idea behind giving the banks cheap money was that the banks would lend it to consumers and businesses.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened: Since the start of the crisis, bank lending has fallen off a cliff.  The banks are, however, lending to the Federal government, which needs to fund record deficits by borrowing more than $1 trillion a year.  The combination of the Fed’s desire to stimulate lending via cheap money and the government’s desire to stimulate the economy by running a huge deficit has made it a great time to be a bank: Banks can borrow from the government at artificially cheap rates and then lend the money back to the Federal government at higher rates, pocketing the difference.

And now it’s going to get even better to be a bank.

   When you know you are about to do something unpopular you try to hide it. For instance, the public would never know that over 140 banks (not counting credit unions) have gone under this year because their announced failures only happen on Friday evenings.

  Another extremely unpopular event would be another round of bailouts for Wall Street banks. That’s why the provisions are hidden deep within the financial reform bill.

 For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system.

  Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

 Believe it or not, this is not the most outrageous thing Washington has done in the last week.

H.R. 1068, the Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street’s Bailout Act.

Wall Street Transaction Tax Proposed by Democrats

Ryan J. Donmoyer

Dec. 3, 2009 (Bloomberg) — A group of congressional Democrats proposed taxing large transactions in stocks and derivatives, an idea that has received a cool reception from the Obama administration. […]

.25 Percent for Stocks

The measure would be based on legislation DeFazio proposed in the House that would apply a tax of 0.25 percent or 25 basis points to stock transactions in excess of $100,000, and a levy of 0.02 percent or 2 basis points on derivatives including futures, options, swaps and credit default swaps.

Harkin and DeFazio said the proposed new levy is backed by more than 200 economists, the AFL-CIO labor union federation and business leaders including Warren Buffett and Vanguard Group Inc. founder John C. Bogle, now president of Bogle Financial Markets Research.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

My things seem chill here.   Everybody seems to be in a groovy frame of mind, maybe it’s the holidays, maybe we’re all just high on cold medicines (I know I am, I’ve got a nasty one), maybe it’s just longer nights and the shorter days ….

But too bad.  I’m gonna hit you over the head with an article that will PISS YOU THE HELL OFF.