patrick.net

I strongly disagree. I believe they were spinning a “savior” role to the public, but the true purpose was paying back the finance industry for all past and future campaign contributions and other related lobbyist perks.

I don't think we are saying different things. They put on the theater expecting people to appreciate their acting (pun intended), but were completely taken aback by the reaction.

The public this time completely saw through the pretext. The big supporter of the original bailout plan - Barney Frank - was also a champion of Faudie Mac and Phony Mae. Campaign contributions matter, if I have to venture a guess ;-)

Harry Reid is a douche. I just watched a press conference with him where he basically said 'we're not going to listen to the voters because we know better than them'.

That type of 'I'm God' thinking is what caused this mess in the first place. Trying to control the markets is like trying to control evolution. You will lose.

Trying to control the markets is like trying to control evolution.

Absolutely. ;)

We need Ron Paul!!!

Before I post this, I just want to say that you should never watch Jim Cramer's TV show. He acts like an assclown on TV, and you should not take him seriously. The shorts on TheStreet.com are massively superior to the dumbed-down entertainment for Joe SixPack.

Cramer was actually pumping GLD on one of his video podcasts. His theory is that you have to assume that the government will succeed in saving the economy. If yes, then the only way out of this vast debt is via strong inflation. If they blow it, then we're facing deflation and ugly social scenarios, in which case the gold will become more valuable anyway.

Hey Brand, just remember you heard it here first. Lets call it the Mish/Schiff Gold Paradox (or maybe TSHTF Gold Price Theory). Hmmm..., maybe it is time to consider the Cramer 'Sell Indicator'.

Well, who has more money, Cramer or Mish?

Guys like Nouriel Roubini, Shiller and others appear to be very intelligent, but are they? Probably every viewpoint is represented in the statistical sample; one of them is bound to be right. If they had such strong convictions, did they put their own money behind it and become multi-millionaires? Because a theory without conviction is basically just an idea to kick around while you're drinking beer with your pals.

If Mish has large gold positions, and he knocks it out of the park, then he certainly deserves some respect.

Now Buffett... him I take very seriously indeed.

Brand,

I understand what you are saying - but you cannot evaluate economists and investors using the same "who-is-richer" yardstick.

Very few economists have been successful investors. Keynes was an exception, not a norm.

Markets exhibit irrational behavior more often than not. Its very understandable why a logical minded theoretician fails to master them.

A veterinarian who understands anatomy of a horse isn't necessarily a successful rider. These are different skills.

Stuck, I think that's a valid point. Traders and economists are different skills. Cramer is really a trader, and even at his peak, he still operated in the trenches on relatively small amounts of stock, commodities and bonds. I do think it's fair to compare him to Mish, CR @ Calculated Risk and any blogger who makes forecasts with the intention of acting upon them. In that respect, I wouldn't equate the bloggers with economists.

I judge them on how beneficial they can be to me.

so how the fuck does that not make you a fucking boomer. I judge them on how they benefit me.

Yeah, go fuck yourself as I am sure you can benefit from that.

Yeah Obama rocks, man he's so cool, he's going to fix everything, he's going to "change", his plan for change and what he's going to change.

..........aaaab..b.b.a..aaa....

Did you like Jimmy Carter? If so, you're going to fucking love Nobama. But then again it is the trend sucking bay fucking area, where everyone is rich and everyone is immune to the outside world. Enjoy your cake mother fuckers.

surfer, you are a generationist :)

You can make this even easier in terms that Henry Paulson can appreciate by saying it will cost:

70062820720.2 [(dollars^2)(avoirdupois pounds)(cm)(yards)(ft^2)] /[(kilogram)(rod)(acre)(handbreadth)(gallon of gas)(person)]

What is there to be confused about?

OO, thanks for the dealer reference.

Fuck all you maggots, all your money now is belong to us.

F. Morgan Worthington, 1st one out of the gate at Woodstock.

The bailout and wallstreet in a nutshell:

"Man is incapable of comprehending any argument that interferes with his revenue" (Descartes 1650).

No matter what you say, i believe that whatever happened ( the housing bubble, bank crashes,bailout) are natural to a free market.
If we want to enjoy the fruits of free markets we have to deal with some bad things.
There are always booms and busts in an economy. This housing boom was another bubble. There was no way it could have been predicted.
You cannot predict bubbles unless it has already been burst ( Greenspan)
All modern economies work on debt and connot function otherwise( Bernake)

Just get over this bailout and have a nice sleep.we will get through it.

..............
i am running for cover.

Brand Says:
"Guys like Nouriel Roubini, Shiller and others appear to be very intelligent, but are they?"

There is no direct correlation between intellingence and financial success

Financial success is a function of (intelligence, greed , selfishness)
most intelligent people i know of are not that selfish.Most of thier thinking goes in to thinking about the society, friends, advising, random musings..etc
They hardly direct that intelligence for thier own success.
I think evolution has it that way else we would still be in jungle if all intelligent people were just working on thier own success.
that's one reason you will find near perfect predictions from bloggers, academic prof's ..etc who are not that successful in thier life but are 100 times smarter than most successful people in walstreet or new media.

It's 2AM after a Friday night. Do you know where your economic recovery team is?

Did anybody else notice the way that Warren Buffet strode right across the trading floor and inversted $5 billion dollars in Goldman Sachs? Would an investmant in JP Morgan Chase been too obvious -- history repeats itself, or was he just tipping his hand?

Bap33,

I don't know whether Barney Frank is gay, I may not have a good radar for those things, but if you really want to be a tough guy, why don't you pick on his speech impediment instead?

Neutron, I can dig your dimensional analysis there :-)

Everyone,

I have trouble understanding he substance of the Republican alternative bailout proposal. How does it makes sense to "sell insurance" on the bad mortgages? Is this not similar to offering fire insurance on buildings that are already known to be on fire? There's been so little discussion of the details of that proposal that I have a heard time making sense of it.

Injecting capital in the form of preferred stock , and forcing the banks to write down against that capital, seems much more sensible. It should be preferred stock, and it should have VOTING RIGHTS to protect the taxpayers money.

In this interview with Alex Jones, Dr. Paul's remedies are much simpler.

“It looks like from I see in Congress, that they’re opting for a decade plus of depression rather than saying let’s correct our ways, let’s balance the budget, let’s bring our troops home,” said Paul, adding that the same course of printing money would continue - prolonging the agony and preventing a necessary correction.
...
Paul said of the bailout, “They want dictatorship, they want to pass all the penalties and suffering on to the average person on Main Street,” adding, “We will have a depression or recession, it’s locked in place due to previous Federal Reserve actions.”
...
The Congressman said that Greenspan and Bernanke should be criminally charged but that such an effort would be largely symbolic. "Morally speaking, they're the culprits," said Paul.

Ron Paul is our only hope. The American people pushed that hope away. Now we have two clowns competing for the White House.

The Original Bankster says: justme, theyre just trying to rephrase their original idea- to have the tax payer eat the shit MBSs. If they use complex enough accounting terminology, shit sandwich = fine meat.

In exchange for the bailout, Wall Street will provide the taxpayers with an all-natural, high fiber organic meal. Straight from the farm to your plate!

can anyone tell me why Wells Fargo is weathering the storm?

Buffett has a stake in it.

McDonald’s Deemed More Credit-Worthy than U.S. Government

Of course. I like my Sausage McMuffin more than any clown.

I rememebr that some one here mentioned that WaMu is in deep shit almost an year ago. Wish I had bought some put options it. My bad. I underestimated, probably due to their goofiness, the smartness of the folks here. Can anyone tell me any other banks facing similar predicament. My analysis so far has identified both B of Ameica and Wells Fargo as excellent candidates for failure due to their dramatically lower current assets compared to current liabilities and long term investments. Since these two are holding companies, they keep their assets on their balance sheet at cost insted of mark to market like Morgan stanley or Goldman Sachs. My conclusion is that stock prices of MS and GS have already suffered everything they possibly could and are at their very their bottom. They are the ones who take advantage of $700B bailout plan. Why is hardly anyone worried about Bank of America and Wells Fargo?
Am I missing something here? Please comment.

Yep..bail 'em out. Bail the automakers out. Bail the airlines out. Ban shorting. Keep the deadbeat homeowners in their homes. Negotiate the principal and interest down for the ones who are about to become deadbeats. Fuck people like me who are renting and trying to preserve their capital with 2% CDs in bankrupt banks in the butt - keep the median in the bay area at 780k and jack up the rents to keep up with "inflation".

indianguy - To give you an analogy, the same people will also say that Capital one is in deep shit and rightly so. However, I am getting hammered as it keeps going up like anything. It goes down 2% while rockets 7%.

Maybe a year from now that'd go titty up too, but I'd get a shitload of margin calls before that happens.

The New York Times has a story on a connection between AIG's bailout and Goldman Sachs. Apparently, AIG was a major trading partner with Goldman and if left to fail would have cost Goldman $20 billion dollars. And it so happened that the only Wall street executive at the Fed discussions involving AIG was from Goldman.

Now here we are with Paulson asking for another bailout of his firm.

"As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.

The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson’s former firm. Mr. Blankfein had particular reason for concern.

Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.....

A Goldman spokesman said in an interview that the firm was never imperiled by A.I.G.’s troubles and that Mr. Blankfein participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire financial system, not his firm’s own interests."

If you believe that last sentence, I have some great mortgage-backed securities for sale for you.

cortexity: Isn't it all just a huge short squeeze? I thought that Capital One would for sure be on the 799+ ban list for short selling. That's got to kill options trading as well, right?

TOB: Don't you like ravers? I mean really, it's totally cool, in a high school nihilistic kind of way. Unless you're the homeowner, then you're just pissed off, and insurance might not even cover the damage. But party on, right bro?

these are my peeps,

TOB, your sense of humor is too much. I needed a good laugh. Thanks.

Brand - It was not on the original 799 blessed ones, but it was later added along with financial powerhouses like GE and IBM. I think 100 or so companies are added to that list every day. All you've to do is call - just like the zero down interest only mortgage applications back in the days.

deflation - I strongly believe GS is the company they're trying to save. Back in the dot com days NASDAQ fell from 5049 to 1110 no one gave a shit, but when GS fell 50 bucks its the end of the world unless we give them 700B. Doesnt matter every other bank fails but GS has to be saved (i.e. it has to be back to 160s).

I heard on KCBS that the calls to our representatives are a little one sided. One Rep. had 688 phone messages and e-mails with only two in favor of the bailout. Not two hundred-just two. Another had almost a thousand and only twenty in favor of the bailout. The social aspect of this whole mess is going to get very interesting. People are not happy and I think this just may be crunch time for the government. They can't pick and choose a segment of society for support because they have pissed off everyone.

I've said this before. Ron Paul needs to start a Populist party. People are ready for a strict Constitution, limited government with tight (a.k.a. accountable) regulation and an end to "experimental" forays overseas.

cortexity: Look, every company that issues credit in any form is basically a financial company. What are you, one of those retarded econnermists? I don't care about this "provide stock liquidity" rubbish, if you're shorting right now, you're as unAmierkan as Al-Qaeda. And the econnermists. Lobbyin' my constituents, tellin' em to send me nasty e-mails. Ya'll want to topple my golden sacks, and WTFOMGBBQ, that sure as texas ain't gonna happin!

I believe the only reason Ron Paul didn't run away with the race is because of his oratorical skills. That's also the only reason B.O. is in the race.