McCain doesn't want Mortgage Bailout

dstark
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:50:23 +0000

John McCain is clueless. Clinton and Obama aren’t much better.

For those that say I don’t want the banks bailed out, uhhhh…it’s too late. It’s already happening…big time.

What the Fed is doing is unprecedented, and they aren’t waiting for any approval from anybody.

Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg;

" The Federal Reserve further expanded its role as a backstop to Wall Street dealers, setting up a new company to manage and sell $30 billion of Bear Stearns Cos. assets.

In disclosing terms of a financing arrangement to speed JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s purchase of Bear Stearns, the Fed said yesterday it hired BlackRock Inc. to oversee and sell the assets, which will be placed in a new company created by the central bank.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, trying to restore confidence to financial markets by averting a collapse of Bear Stearns, is pushing the central bank into new territory. Yesterday’s announcement shows the Fed acting like a bank liquidator – a role traditionally performed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. – for Bear Stearns, a firm whose main regulator is the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bernanke has taken the bit in his teeth,‘’ said Tom Schlesinger, executive director of the Financial Markets Center in Howardsville, Virginia.I can think of nothing in recent or distant memory that remotely resembles what the Fed is doing here, certainly within the context of the central bank’s operations.‘’

The Fed last week agreed to help JPMorgan acquire Bear Stearns after a run on Bear, once the second-biggest underwriter of U.S. mortgage bonds. In an effort to shore up Wall Street’s other firms, it also agreed to become lender of last resort to all 20 primary dealers in Treasury notes."