The problem was NEVER subprime … statistically those mortgages were only 6.3% of the total pool. Alt-A and prime and jumbo, though, were hardly in better shape. However, the main problem was and is: “It’s the derivatives, stupid!”

Maybe Ian or somebody around here should write a post about derivatives and who’s using them and what their impact has been.

Black Monday…?

Somehow the image of Slim Pickents riding an ICBM up Wall Street come to mind.

Yeeeee haw!

The fed can only print worthless money now. Shades of the Weimar republic.

I wonder if the Rich who can do so have been converting from dollars to Euros or Yuan or other hard assets to avoid the devaluation (which they knew was happening) of their dollars.

How we gonna tax their ill-gotten gains away from them?

The entire monetary base of the US is 800,000 billion, and these idiots owed 13 trillion?

Enroiable!

That’s certianly enough to blackmail the Fed.

In his first inaugural address FDR said, I’ll paraphrae, ‘the money changers only want more credit but it was too much credit which got us into this mess. These people have no vision’

Here here.

Ditto ditto.

But, beware, Bernanke will raise rates the second a Democrat takes office as president. They did it to Clinton and they’ll do it again.

And yet the falling dollar will increase inflationary pressure significantly.

Normally you’d have some successes and failures in the corporate world.

Inflation may ameliorate the losses, but it’s also a hidden tax on successful businesses. Their profits are suddenly worth less.

It’s like the falling dollar. We don’t have the same buying power, so the same number of dollars doesn’t look worse but really is.

We’re all paying so Bush and his buddies can stay rich, even after mucking it up for everybody else.

And why leave out oil?

Without a controllable oil supply the economy is in the tank.

Nobody wallks in this economy.

So they started a nice war for oil and the MIC made out like bandits. it was patriotic too, they were saving our way of life!

First they steal it all from the public with higher and higher prices, but fixed incomes and then credit cards everywhere and now they’re fighting for it among themselves with the oil companies currently winning.

I say we should tax oil industry companies for war-time windfall profits and try to put an end to over-active oil future speculation. That might stop the high gasoline prices.

Then, as others here are saying, let some companies fail because they earned it the old-fashioned way.

Then take the remaining dreck and patch it up as best we can.

Aside from that we need to provide lots of mattresses for the general public, so the landing won’t be so hard for them.

Government should ‘govern’, not control or own or manage. Government should ‘protect’ and ‘enable’, but not save all corporations from their own stupidity and greed.

I suppose he has to bail out Bear Stearns, but it is the bail outs that keep getting us in trouble.

The fake Conservatives show their hypocrisy and total LACK of faith in the free-market system. They act like Soviet oligarchs who demand profits during good times and socialized losses.

Where’s the Conservative in America who stands up to them and says they should suck it up and go bankrupt like they are supposed to?

They risk capital and then mismanage it, so why should all of them be saved? I wonder how many of them have preached the free market over the years and now beg for a government ‘bail-out’ (call it Communism!).

We are because the goofs who got us into this mess are still calling the shots on it.

What is needed is a grand settlement that would spin subprime and other marginal mortgages into long term fixed rate ones plus a stupidity penalty.

Lenders would have to write down the size of these mortgages and pay a greed penalty.

And as I have been saying for a while now, this will only work if fairly severe limits are placed on hedge fund activities since these are so disruptive of and destructive to capital market stability.

ditto

To recap:

1) Require refinancing subprime mortgages to long-term with fixed rates.

2) Force lenders to accept less profit on those mortgages as penalty.

[ for having put us in this mess. And for having put us out having to go through all this to save their sorry asses. ]

3) Place some limits on hedge funds to prevent them from generating this kind of problem in the future.

Hugh, would you care to specify some hedge fund regulations and what they’re doing that the cure relates to?

You’d think someone would be sounding an alarm. Time to shore up the US$ before it’s worth as much as the peso (no disrespect meant for our Mexican neighbors, but their Government has made bone-head moves that have weakened the peso). Yet another feather in the cap for Bush’s legacy. In the meantime we will all pay dearly with the first reduction in the standard of living our Country has experienced since the Depression.

Now who would take joy in destroying our Economy?

Bin Laden
Castro
Chavez
Kim Jong-il
Putin
King Abdullah
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and, oh yeah I almost forgot, Bush!