Market crash: are we there yet ?

[sailhog]

Originally Posted by bill352

I am financially unsophisticated compared to some of the posters here. I do know that I don't like what's going on with my pension fund. That is partly offset, however, by the fun I'm having watching all the free-market disciples on Wall Street elbow each other aside for a place at the government trough. Can't even put lipstick on that pig.

Bill,
I seem recall a few voices saying something to the effect: "If only government would get out of the way..." Now they've changed their tune. On an optimistic note, I heard this morning that AIG's bridge loan comes with an interest rate of 11.31%. Woof! I want to see the government to make an obscene amount of money off this deal and all the other similar deals -- just for grins. Maybe some of the money will find its way into your pension, Cap'n... but I doubt it will. In any case, good luck to you.

[PBzeer]

Interesting tidbit about contributions from Fanny and Freddy from '89-'08,
Obama - $126,349 number 2 behind Dodd
McCain - $0

Full list can be viewed here OpenSecrets | Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Lawmakers - Capital Eye

[Freesail99]

Interesting tidbit about contributions from Fanny and Freddy from '89-'08,
Obama - $126,349 number 2 behind Dodd
McCain - $0

On Fox this morning, they said McCain's contribution from fanny & freddy was about 1/2 of Obama's and he was number 60 on the list.

[PBzeer]

Looked twice, didn't see his name. I'll look again.

edit: looked again, no McCain

[PBzeer]

Seems as though McCain was one of 3 sponsors on a regulatory bill for Fanny and Freddy back in '03. It passed the house, but died in the Senate.

[Rickm505]

Originally Posted by serenity4u2

My deepest sorrow for ALL Latte Libs.. My portfolio is awesome- wow.... .

What an interesting perspective that you feel only "Libs" have money in their retirement accounts, or that only "Libs" buy real estate. I imagine it's a good thing for you that only "Libs" get laid off and are looking for jobs.....

Just another Knee Jerk Neocon dreaming about the good ole days, with typical "point the finger" mentality (always in the wrong directlion) and no solutions offered. Hopefully your next post will actually have been thought out before typing..

All Americans are in this together, and the worse it gets, more and more economies outside of the USA are involved.

Somebody better get their act together and quick.

John, I had thought that McCain didn't take money from Fannie or Freddie.... as none of their lobbyists are on his staff...

[Cruisingdad]

Anyone want to bet on who's next at the chopping block? My bet is WaMu. I also bet the govt does not bail them out.

Also, in the history of our country and Capitalism, is there an example of the government doing this? Having large scale ownership in HUGE private companies?

[chris_gee]

Roubini has a way with words.
"This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history [Fannie and Freddie] comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.

The ideologue “regulators” who literally held a chain saw at a public event to smash “unnecessary regulations” are now communists nationalizing private firms and socializing their losses: the bailout of the Bear Stearns creditors, the bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the use of the Fed balance sheet (hundreds of billions of safe US Treasuries swapped for junk toxic illiquid private securities), the use of the other GSEs (the Federal Home Loan Bank system) to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of “liquidity” to distressed, illiquid and insolvent mortgage lenders, the use of the SEC to manipulate the stock market (restrictions on short sales), the use of the US Treasury to manipulate the mortgage market (Treasury will now for the first time outright buy agency MBS to manipulate and prop up this market), the creation of a whole host of new bailout facilities (TAF, TSLF, PDCF) to prop and rescue banks and, for the first time since the Great Depression, to bail out non-bank financial institutions, and a whole range of other executive and legislative actions (including the recent bill to provide a public guarantee to mortgage for banks willing to reduce their face value).

This is the biggest and most socialist government intervention in economic affairs since the formation of the Soviet Union and Communist China. So foreign investors are now welcome to the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America) where they can earn fat spreads relative to Treasuries on agency debt and never face any credit risks (not even the subordinated debt holders who made a fortune yesterday as those claims were also made whole).

Like scores of evangelists and hypocrites and moralists who spew and praise family values and pretend to be holier than thou and are then regularly caught cheating or cross dressing or found to be perverts these Bush hypocrites who spewed for years the glory of unfettered wild west laissez faire jungle capitalism (and never believed in any sensible and appropriate regulation and supervision of financial markets) allowed the biggest debt bubble ever to fester without any control, have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and are now forced to perform the biggest government intervention and nationalizations in the recent history of humanity, all for the benefit of the rich and the well connected. So Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA. Fanatic zealots of any religion are always pests that cause havoc and destruction with their inflexible fanaticism; but they usually don’t run the biggest economy in the world. But these laissez faire voodoo-economics zealots in charge of the USA have now caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the nastiest economic crisis in decades. So let them be shamed in public for their hypocrisy and zealotry that has caused so much financial and economic damage."

[Freesail99]

I am still looking online for what I heard on TV.

Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence - Lisa Lerer - Politico.com

L.A. Times story about conservative pressure on John McCain (pictured) to push for a fig leaf of reform in the way Fannie and Freddie operate: McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was president of an organization, the Homeownership Alliance, that advocates for expansion of low-interest loans funded by the two mortgage giants. Federal records show that Arthur Culvahouse Jr., who is heading McCain's vice presidential search effort, was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae. Former U.S. Sen Warren Rudman, a McCain advisor, was hired by Fannie Mae to lead an internal review of the company's accounting policies that concluded in 2006.

[Rickm505]

Originally Posted by Cruisingdad

Anyone want to bet on who's next at the chopping block? My bet is WaMu.

No bet. Their best hope is to find someone to buy them.

Are we going to change the signs??

Welcome to America, North America's newest socialist country.

brought to you by....... (wait for it)

The Republican Party