<p>I would be in favor of allowing the mortgage mess to lead us into a deep recession. The entire global economy needs a reality check. All over the world people are acting like there is no tomorrow.</p>
<p>John McCain is clueless. Clinton and Obama aren’t much better. </p>
<p>For those that say I don’t want the banks bailed out, uhhhh…it’s too late. It’s already happening…big time. </p>
<p>What the Fed is doing is unprecedented, and they aren’t waiting for any approval from anybody. </p>
<p><a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg;
<p>" 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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p><code>Bernanke has taken the bit in his teeth,‘’ said Tom Schlesinger, executive director of the Financial Markets Center in Howardsville, Virginia.</code>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.‘’ </p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>"The Fed said March 16 it would provide financing to JPMorgan for $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets. Yesterday, it released terms of the funding, including some details on the company managed by BlackRock. The Fed said JPMorgan will shoulder the first $1 billion of any losses, disclosed that the loan will be for 10 years and carry the 2.5 percent interest rate charged to commercial banks at the discount window. </p>
<p>Fed officials defended their role in the Bear Stearns rescue as necessary to prevent a broader financial panic. Credit markets have been roiled by concerns that borrowers won’t repay debt, and funding has dwindled for securities firms, hedge funds, and mortgage banks. </p>
<p>Still, Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner may have overstepped and altered the role of the government in financial markets, said Joe Mason, associate professor of finance at Drexel University in Philadelphia. </p>
<p>`Far Outside’
The Fed is so far outside the traditional bounds,'' said Mason, a former economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of five federal bank regulators.It isn't innovative, it is taking a step back in time to a system of direct credit'' where the government decides ``who gets funding and who doesn't,'' he said. </p>
<p>Under the terms of the deal, the Fed will loan $29 billion, and JPMorgan will loan $1 billion, to a new company based in the U.S. state of Delaware."</p>
<p>If Mini knew as much about finance as he thinks he does he would know that even the small business making kayaks or tents relies on loans to finance their operations. These come from banks who need to borrow that money from other larger banks–often big NY banks who rely on WS IBanks to get them huge amounts of money to lend down the line. When the whales stop lending the little guy can’t get his loan renewed and ends up in big trouble. It is a large complex system and when the big guys catch cold the little guy dies. Same for the big companies employing thousands of regular folks. They need to borrow too. Even state and local governments borrow in anticipation of later tax dollars coming in. If the cost of that goes up it costs all the taxpayers more $$$.</p>
<p>The government is loaning money to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and other firms for 2.5%. Then these firms leverage those loans 30 to 1 and loan money to us. </p>
<p>Why not get rid of the middleman and have the government just loan the money at 2.5 % directly to businesses and consumers?</p>
<p>Really, that’s the last thing we want. Although they probably would not do a worse job I don’t see them evaluating and closing billions of $$$ in loans in a timely fashion. And if some Washington company does not get the loan they wanted you will Have Patty Murray stomping her little tennis shoes and threatening to freeze all loans etc etc. Just not workable. </p>
<p>OTOH the geniuses did pretty crappy too.</p>
<p>[Bloomberg.com:</a> Worldwide](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>Yeah. I know it isn’t going to happen, but after watching what the big boys have done and watching the big boys get super sweet loans…</p>
<p>I like that link, Barrons. </p>
<p>I never want to read about the brilliant guys on Wall Street again. I know I will, but I don’t want to …</p>
<p>“Why not get rid of the middleman and have the government just loan the money at 2.5 % directly to businesses and consumers?”</p>
<p>We KNOW the answer to that, so don’t play coy. Who IS the Federal Reserve, and exactly what is it that corporate socialists do?</p>
<p>Hey, it’s their money anyway, and we just borrow it from our owners.</p>
<p>Yeah…the Wall Street bankers make all the money and pay all the taxes (we should be grateful) and where would this country be without these guys?</p>
<p>And if the Wall Street guys ever lose their money…the public must be sure to give the money right back to its rightful owners.</p>
<p>I think there is some serious pain on WS now. Many Hedge Funds are TU. The stock prices besides Bear are way down and that’s big $$$ to those guys who get much of their bonuses in stock they can’t sell very quickly. Is it the same pain as some guy in Fresno losing his overpriced house–maybe yes maybe no. But I’m sure they are feeling it. They just don’t cry on camera.</p>
<p>One thing I find amusing in this crisis is the banks won’t even loan money to each other. </p>
<p>That really builds confidence in our financial system. :)</p>
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<p>Has anybody noticed this theme with mini? He says something and then when somebody calls him out on it he claims that he either “posted the link in another thread” or “so and so explained it somewhere else.” </p>
<p>You need to quit with the lies, grow a pair and engage in debate instead of dodging every question somebody presents. </p>
<p>Once again, the CEO’s of these companies are losing hundreds of millions out of their own pocket. Explain how they’re being bailed out. Surely selling their stock $10/share isn’t a bailout.</p>
<p>LaxAttack09: Yes, yes I have. Especially when called on his “GENOCIDE GENOCIDE OHMYGOD MUUUURRRRDDDDEEEERRRROOUSSS GENOCIDE IN IRAQ” stance - it’s always in “a previous thread” that I can find “if I search”… never could find that thread, and mini would never provide it. Must be hidden in the mists of time.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I feel under no obligation to post any link more than twice. You are adults (supposedly parents), and you are quite capable of doing your homework.</p>
<p>But lest you didn’t notice, I posted the quote from Madeleine Albright affirming the killing of half a million children, and the actual citation from United Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Prosecution of Genocide yesterday.</p>
<p>And also, since you didn’t seem to notice, DStark posted a fairly complete explanation in posts above, repeating what he had already posted and linked, but which you didn’t bother to seek out.</p>
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<p>It’s ok mini, you obviously have no problem making radical claims w/o proof. Hey, it’s a lot easier when you don’t have to support your positions with actual facts…just say you did it, somewhere else :)</p>
<p>"Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?</p>
<p>Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.</p>
<p>–60 Minutes (5/12/96)</p>
<p>Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).</p>
<p>But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale–a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one’s political ends–does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl–a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00).</p>
<p>There has also been an attempt to seize on the lowest possible numbers. In early 1998, Columbia University’s Richard Garfield published a dramatically lower estimate of 106,000 to 227,000 children under five dead due to sanctions, which was reported in many papers (e.g. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2/15/98). Later, UNICEF came out with the first authoritative report (8/99), based on a survey of 24,000 households, suggesting that the total “excess” deaths of children under 5 was about 500,000."</p>
<p>In fact, the only serious debate about the Clinton genocide was whether all 500,000 were under age 5. Now you have a whole bunch of stuff you can go research, from Leslie Stahl to UNICEF, and I wish you well.</p>
<p>1) I was talking about your bailout quote</p>
<p>2) Copy/paste isn’t linking…you actually need to put in a link. haha</p>
<p>Laxattack, (to get back on topic) if you see no difference between a family losing its home and its entire net worth and a part time CEO seeing his inflated stock fall from 9 figures to 8 - well, I guess it will be hard to explain it to you, but I’ll try.</p>
<p>Let’s assume there are two thieves. One steals $300 Million dollars, gets caught, and is forced to give back $285 million of it. He keeps $15 million and is “forced” to get by on that.</p>
<p>The second thief steals $300,000, but spends $15,000 of it to live on, so he can only give back $285,000. He’s broke and thrown in jail. </p>
<p>Has the first thief been punished more because he gave back more? Or is the second thief punished more because he’s rotting in a jail cell with nothing? </p>
<p>Now, this is an imperfect analogy, but you really need to start analyzing social issues with a little more sophisticated mathematics than you’ve demonstrated so far, and I’m trying to help you grow in that direction, OK?</p>
<p>“2) Copy/paste isn’t linking…you actually need to put in a link. haha”</p>
<p>Already did. Now do your homework. (I left out the link on purpose, so that you might practice either your Search skills on CC, or your Google skills.) You’re an adult, and, I assume, a parent, so maybe you can set a good example for your kids.</p>
<p>mini, last time we had this discussion, my last question (the one you never answered) was actually to do with how you could claim this to be genocide, when the UN genocide convention does not appear to include what happened in Iraq. You never really answered. I also called you on your repeated statements about current genocide in and around Baghdad, which you have similarly avoided.</p>