patrick.net

I can open the bill. The link I posted earlier is from cnn.com.

The bill did say that California assets are not elgible for the buy program because they caused 70% of this problem. Maybe only poeple in California can't read it because of the section throwing California under the bus ;)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21draftcnd.html

Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

They were gonna throw Phoenix under the bus, but then Congress decided that the Bay Area is far more special.

Fortunately, Hank Paulson will have the power to determine what constitutes the Real Bay Area; I believe the CAR will be assisting in that endeavor.

snmr, it seems that the new Section 119 (Judicial Review) significantly alters Hanky Panky's wish for unlimited power.

Headset, I understand the sentiment, but ultimately any quality company that gets on the ropes is going to issue preferred shares, high-yield bonds or additional common shares to raise capital. Just wait to see what the banks buy once we purge the crap from their balance sheets... the survivors will be making some sweet, sweet deals.

Brand Says:
"Section 119 (Judicial Review) significantly alters Hanky Panky’s wish for unlimited power"

Thanks for the update.

If history is any guide, unlimited powers in one hand have always ended with regret.

Asia down, futures down - I cant wait to see the next bunny they pull from the hat to keep the markets propped up.

When asked whose children would be participants in the program he declined to comment.

Don't worry. No child will be left behind.

Neutron,

You are joking, right. There is no mention of any states or geographical areas in the bill
afaict.

I have read Patrick.com for a long time. This blog used to be a lot of fun for me. It was like warning about a tsunami that you know was going to come, and watching the idiots in denial. Frustrating, but there was a sense of being contrarian, and of knowing that they will get their come-uppance. Then house prices started to fall, and it was great fun.

But now the tsunami is really upon us, it's about 100 ft high, and everybody is in its path, including your children, and its not fun any more. For some of you perhaps, but not for me.

Now may people here, Taxpayers all, are pissed about the bailout package. Absolutely indignant. How dare they take MY money when I didn't have anything to do with this mess. But who are the "taxpayers"? Real-estate agents who made out like bandits are taxpayers. So are the lenders. And the house-builders. And the contractors who had many years of great business because lots of people got HELOCs to renovate their homes. Also the restaurant owners who made out since everyone felt rich. Even waitresses, bartenders. Cruise line workers. Disneyland new hires and high school summer workers. Bank Tellers. School janitors who got extra overtime because the district was flushed with property tax money. And I dare say many of the people who have posted here.

In short, MANY, EVEN MOST people had a good economic time over the last several years, not just the evil investment bankers and real estate speculators. Now these self-same people are joining the chorus of "Unfair, Unfair". But is it really unfair? You could have said at any time over those go-go years that this ain't right, this is blood money, renounced your citizenship and moved to a commune in say, Argentina, but you didn't. You chose to stay in the United States to partake in the mana, and in doing so you threw in your lot with the fate of everyone here. So now the tsunami is here. Is now the time the be screaming crap, crap, crap, what a crappy country, crappy government, and woe is me that I have to bear with such unfairness in my life? And I will call my Republican Congressman (who you never thought of calling before to warn about the shady practices you just knew were going on for years) and make sure that whatever they do (I don't really care) just don't get me involved or I'll vote you out of office?
Like I said, this blog is not fun anymore. The people that we laughed at before are gone. I have this awful feeling that the only people left to laugh about are ourselves.

You could have said at any time over those go-go years that this ain’t right, this is blood money, renounced your citizenship and moved to a commune in say, Argentina, but you didn’t. You chose to stay in the United States to partake in the mana,

Just because I didn't leave the country and not renounced my citizenship means I chose to partake in this mania.

You are a fuckin' idiot, Marina Prime.

Let me be FRANK fellow blogmates,

start planning your exit strategy. If you haven't started yet, get a plan now, if you have already had a plan, focus on the execution.

First of all, we are in a very lucky window that USD is propped up for a strange reason, lack of USD to cover the debt, so take advantage of the last window of the "strong dollar". We may head directly from strong dollar to a dead dollar. Either they print enough to cover the debt, or they cannot print fast enough and there will be a total collapse caused by capital flight. Lots of foreigners I talk to recently who have their money in the US capital markets are very eager to pull out. It is not just about the economy, they have lost trust in the system.

Second, at some point, this country will impose capital and exchange control. I have seen this done in desperate countries when every single penny is fleeing at the same time. This day will come. Get your money outside of the US jurisdiction, before others wake up. In the Argentine crisis, the government put a ban on foreign repatriation of funds (very painful for HSBC Argentina operation) and forced citizens to convert their USD to local currency at 1:1. If you have FXE, FXY, FXwhatever, they are crap, convert into real FX and put in an account sitting in a foreign land. It is ok to transfer fund around right now, but such an option may soon expire.

I will raid all my retirement accounts, bite the tax bullet and move them overseas, put in Swiss Franc or Euro. I won't retire in the US, and I believe the tax rate in the US has only one direction to go. If you are young and have no capital to preserve, start downloading immigration forms NOW, because you will be facing lots of competition in another 12 months, get your immigration papers, and you will have about a year to determine whether you want to land. All you lucky green cards out there, do NOT become US citizen, be happy with your green card that you can give up any time without any financial consequences.

Btw, out of all the countries that are said to be doing worse than us, I think UK is the only pathetic ass that can completely disappear and leave no impact to the overall well being of the human kind.

Finance is like 2/3 of UK's GDP, what kind of loser country is that? The only productive job for that friggin freezing island is pushing paper? I don't buy the propaganda that the rest of the world is doing worse than the US, but I do buy that UK is worse, that is one currency with a more deserving position in hell than us.

TOB,

they are smarter. Look at what we got, I cannot even leave the country to the banksters without paying a huge up front exit cost. It is worse than divorcing your wife.

TOB,

I agree with you on the retirement thing. I took a loan out paying no penalty and taxes to give the the remaining money I need to buy some land outright with cash. It is only 2 miles from a town and 6 miles from my work. I have no choice but to live in the country because they just do not build power plants near large cities.

I am not running away because I don't see another place to go. I would like Australia if they had nukes. Ohh well, I will be here for the long haul.

This Tsunami of debt is only the first wave. The second wave is always larger and it will be the "End of Cheap Oil" Tsunami. We will never run out of oil, but we will not have enough cheap supplies to go around. The unconventional oils will beable to make up the gap only if oil gets VERY expensive. These people in the SE bitching about there being no gas have no idea how good they have it now. When you have to pay $20/gallon of gas what are they going to do?

Hey Dennis - glad you are here. I have been worried about you.
As the anti-surfer X, I both hate swearing and am very worried about our retired boomers. I feel I can recover from this economic crises, but wiping out the savings of a lifetimes worth of work - wow! Are you starting back into law? Or have you found a way to safeguard the value of your savings?

Is DinOr around?

Nancy Pelosi.
I am not sure what to say about her.
EVERY SINGLE CONGREESMAN states their constituencies are overwhelmingl againstthe bailout, including Feinstein and Boxer. All of them state 75% are against and many/most state 99% against.

And then Nancy states 73% are pro-bailot in her constiuecy.

Well, her district is 4/5 of the city of San Francisco. And they do have a big financial district there. So, maybe?

But I suspect she is simply lying. Lying as easily as she breathes air.

What is the minimum elegibility requirement to be allowed to vote in her district? Can I rent a cardboard box, and claim I live in it so that I can vote/ Pelosi needs to go from Miss Speaker, to Miss Out-of-a-Job.

Fire Paulson.

Interesting to see that the Wachovia (WB) purchase by Citigroup is "aided" by a guarantee from the FDIC that partially covers losses on the WB loan portfolio. Note that the guarantee was given against $12B in preferred stock.

Was this a reasonable deal for the public? Did Paulson do the right thing on this one?

...and by the way, is this an unprecedented action by the FDIC, or has any similar guarantee occurred before?

TOB,

Don't forget rope and torches! With today's synthetic fibers, an angry mob can become very creative how they use the rope :)

Wachovia is gone but there is not much on the FDIC website about it. The FDIC brokered the deal!

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't support riots.

But really, they're asking for it. We told them loud and clear what we wanted and they pretended the people didn't exist. Any trust the people had in their government will be gone in 6-7 months when it becomes clear this plan didn't work.

They must have gotten used to their constituents not really caring. They are completely underestimating the level of anger that is brewing out there.

What is the deal with the Fed currency swaps, including thoie announced today? The newsmakers describe it as an action to "help" other countries by providing liquidity in US dollars, but who needs or wants wants dollars? They are already sitting on trillions of it in the form of US debt.

Is it really the *other* central banks that are helping *us* by buying still more dollars?

At least England has the decency to nationalize their failed institutions.

Northern Rock and now Bradford and Bigley. There is at least some chance taxpayers will not lose their shirt.

The newsmakers describe it as an action to “help” other countries by providing liquidity in US dollars, but who needs or wants wants dollars?

I have less faith on other currencies. I will not be surprised if USD just rally away in a few months.

Not investment advice.

Con-men in con-gress. Nothing more.

The unmitigated arrogance of our leaders is amazing. They keep saying 'they know better' and that the 'gee its hard to understand plan' is the right way to go.

NO!

We do understand. We wat to skip the step of wasting $700b and jump right to the step where we rebuild finance based on something other than seriel bubble blowing.

$700b can buy some pretty nice levies, bridges, hydroelectric projects, investment in effecient and cheap solar, wind-farms, high speed rail, state bail-outs, etc. Dumping money into the de-leveraging chaos is just thowing good money after bad.

Stop it!

Apparently people all over the country are reporting problems reading the House originalted PDF of the bailout bill, so this guy has cranked up a html version at his site:

www.godlikeproductions.com1/message619389/pg1

I'm not sure what the problem is....version problems with Adobe Acrobat Reader? The error messages all say something like "data error cannot open". I'm using an older version 5 (since I have a full-up copy of Acrobat version 5 and have found "never mix versions).

Ron Paul makes all Obama and Pelosi look like Gary Coleman and Dana Whatsherface from Different Strokes.

Ron Paul is almost like the Second Coming.

Dumping money into the de-leveraging chaos is just thowing good money after bad.

It is like throwing good money into a burning house and wondering why the fire is not put out.

We can keep trying to come up with analogies all day and still cannot capture the stupidity, ignorance, and malevolence of what is going on.

all together now ....

It would be fun to have HARM and DinOR chime in

From CNN/Money

Others point out that the bailout doesn't address the root cause of the problems on Wall Street as well as the broader economy: falling house prices.

The "root cause" was the was the housing price runup, not the ongoing correction. Why is that so hard to see?

Let the situation continue to correct by disallowing a bailout. If the economy needs a spur, that $700 billion and any follow on bailout money would be as Duke says, better spent on infrastructure.

thenuttyneutron Says:

Wachovia is gone but there is not much on the FDIC website about it. The FDIC brokered the deal!

I can't find anything about WalkOverYa in the news. They are "gone?"

I am on C-SPAN now and they look like they are minutes away from the final vote. I am on pins and needles! I hope this does not pass.

I plan to vote against my reps in all future elections if they vote yes on this bill. I wrote 3 letters to each of them and their offices know how I feel.

I still find it unbelievable that 95% of the input from the people is against this bailout, yet it does appear that this bill will pass!

@ Headset

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agVqu_CIqFyw&refer=home

Headset.

Right on.

Don't let the realtor and wall street thieves re-define the problem as being the *fall* in housing prices. The problem was and always will be the unsustainable RISE in housing prices.

TOB,

Yeah, let us securitize the new SF Bay Bridge. I can dig it. (Sarcasm off).
Seriously, if anyone says "infrastructure" again I'm going to barf.

thenuttyneutron,

Thanks. I do not have any money in Wachovia personally, by my employer's cab company does. I just called the accounting department, we are taking over $100k out of it immediately.