So, Laura!

jus cogens!

I’ll go get the others now and then watch the clip.

gonna ask and answer a question;

what do these “bailouts” really mean?

what it really means is the fed will print more paper and just about give it away to those companies that need the bailout.

Even the thought that our tax dollars used to bail out the banks would be allowed to trickle back to us makes me smile. That just ain’t gonna happen! They may sell those dollars back to us, in the form of a higher interest loan, but anyone who thinks the banks will ever give you something for nothing, even a toaster, is deluded.

The government exists to take care of its base – the very rich. Most of us will never see any real help in times of trouble; just look at the plight of NOLA.

Maher made an excellent point one night. This administration wants to privatize gains, and socialize losses!

As much as I am not a Maher fan that is very well put.

Ain’t that the truth!

It’s a phrase we should all be using early and often.

Its pretty clear crime, fraud, and greed is out of control.

Its also very clear that most of the world is NOT setup based on merit. Symbiosis and Evolution are not selecting for a better world. For example here is a drug that takes 75% less to administer and is more effective – but a practice that is not busy will not choose the better drug because they will have fewer billable hours. There are so many examples of this in all walks of life and nobody gives a shit. By the time people get theirs they most are to tired (or super greedy) to “give back” – in fact they use their money/power to press their advantages.

That point was being made by a lot of people around the time of the Bear Stearns bail-out.

When the banks get a bail-out, why doesn’t it get passed along to the consumer?

Well that’s rather the point, isn’t it? All of the liquidity that the Fed and other central banks have pumped into the markets is ostensibly to shore them up so they can go back to more traditional lending practices. But if safer and less risky, they don’t produce the desired rate of return. So what it is really going on is that the same entities that gave us the subprime fiasco are now pumping this cheap money they have access to into the speculative binge in the developing commodities/crude oil bubble.

The sub-prime was one of the biggest rips. Not only did they all jack up house prices and all this WAY HIGH. But in addition the greed from the root to the fruit on that was crazy – what they did was package up all the lies and then sell them to people that were being ripped off in their house prices in the first place.

Yes some big players lost money – but by and large they extracted that money along the way, and in some cases planned to get out at the right time. So joe blow pays an extra $100,000 on his inflated house price, then has this bad debt in his 401k, and has a shitty mortage.

We are seeing a series of the largest transfers of wealth in history:
- tech bubble
- real estate bubble
- boomers coming into retirement & death

Well, I know someone is pumping money into natural gas because I see the prices every day as part of my job. The prices right now are about 1.5 times what they usually are at the depths of winter.

The Fed has opened the discount window to investment banks. I’ll defer to others who know more, but it essentially means the Fed will trade dollars or TBills for mortgage backed securities collateral that no one else wants. How long the Fed holds onto this stuff is unknown to me. The possibility for fraud against the taxpayers at many different levels imho is enormous.

On the white supremacist right, they’re trying to blame the whole mess on Federal mandates that “forced” banks to lend to non-whites poor people. If that were the case, the foreclosures and the problems would be limited to poor neighborhoods.

The borrowing that drove the sub-prime collapse was by the super rich and the very wealthy in the hedge funds. They borrowed money to buy mortgage backed securities. As long as the default rate was impossibly low, they knew they’d make enough to pay back the loan and show a profit. The default rates still aren’t that high, but the securities are so leveraged, that the hedge funds can’t even afford to pay back the loans, much less make a profit. Those loans are owed to our pensions, our 401(k)’s, our health insurance funds, insurance companies, county and state bonds, and international customers. That’s who loaned them the money to buy the mortgage backed securities.

Working Americans are expected to make all the sacrifices to protect the interests of the well heeled, well connected and the rich. When the people finally wake up to the big scam perpetrated by the Republican Party and their anti-American ideology promoted by a corrupt and complicit corporate media, there will be no place for America’s new fascists to hide. Let the trials begin.

in addition to banks.

The pols need money from the rich to run ads to convince us they are regular Joes/Janes that share our values and concerns. In return for this money the pols do favors for the rich that screw the rest of us.

We tend to focus on DC pols, but where a rich person can really get a bang for the buck is lower down the food chain. A couple of grand here or there to a state legislator or mayor is about as good of an investment as you can make. Then, the legislator or mayor can run a sunny ad having a backyard picnic with their extended family. Of course, once elected, they will allow some contributor to run a coal fired plant a half mile fron your backyard.

Bullseye.

Um, yeah. I just delivered a check to our new Repuke state legislator for my professional interest group. The first time I did anything like that. (I did it for the profession, not for the repukes) It was interesting. A way of getting his attention when the time comes. No more.

jane newness

Hi Laura! Finally caught one of these threads while it’s still live! Interesting (and wonderful) the way folks at GRITtv are handling this. I need to talk to Mechanical Bull as I’m on dialup and have questions and answers about how this should be done. The talk about embedding text is good but has nothing to do with my accessibility and if transcripts are provided as CNN does, that will cover a major accessibility issue for the deaf, the blind and those on dialup. I have failed to load any of the clips and so have no idea what’s been said so far. Reading the comments hasn’t given me much and liveblogging is too much to ask. I also pay by the minute so it’s painful for me to be on too long. If it takes two hours to load a few minutes…YIKES!

Anyway, I can load the transcript, go offline and read. Really wanted to see that first one with our good friends and Phil. *sigh*

Kudos though. :)

You know people are quoting today that McCain says we will be out of Iraq by 2013. First, this is not exactly what he says. We will still have troops there but not as many because by that point “The Iraq War has been won.” Second, this comes from a speech describing the world of 2013 if he is elected President. You can find the whole speech here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05…..ccain.html

It is really delusional and I have to admit I could only get through half of it before my BS meter went off the scale.

The current release of famous Chateau Latour. Cost: $2,333 a bottle!

at my old wine store (from about 20 years ago when i lived in CA and still drank wine), the 2003 latour pauillac is “only” $1500.

seriously though, i haven’t been watching prices, but i can recall (from when i thought vulgar consumption was a good thing) getting bollinger RD and veuve clicquot grande dame for about $45-50 . looks like the equivalent now is about $120. not so bad given what has happened to the dollar, energy and food in general in the last 20 years.

completely agree with the larger point, but don’t see that wine is the best example to use.

We tend to focus on DC pols, but where a rich person can really get a bang for the buck is lower down the food chain. A couple of grand here or there to a state legislator or mayor is about as good of an investment as you can make.

I agree, in principle, with your point.

However, the sub prime mess also shows you the value of a well placed $100,000 here or there.

Getting Congress to look the other way re: regulation led to hundreds of millions in profits.

Anytime someone tells me it would cost too much for us to pay for all federal elections ourselves, I say it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost we pay now in favors given to big donors.

Anytime someone tells me it would cost too much for us to pay for all federal elections ourselves, I say it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost we pay now in favors given to big donors.

Yes.

holy cow, we’re all going to need a recalibration:

So, what I want to do today is take a little time to describe what I would hope to have achieved at the end of my first term as President. I cannot guarantee I will have achieved these things. I am presumptuous enough to think I would be a good President, but not so much that I believe I can govern by command. Should I forget that, Congress will, of course, hasten to remind me. The following are conditions I intend to achieve. And toward that end, I will focus all the powers of the office; every skill and strength I possess; and seize every opportunity to work with members of Congress who put the national interest ahead of partisanship, and any country in the world that shares our hopes for a more peaceful and prosperous world.

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

it would cost too much for us to pay for all federal elections ourselves, I say it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost we pay now in favors given to big donors.

That’s the rub, isn’t it. If the pols didn’t need the money from the big donors the big donors wouldn’t reap the outrageous profits their donations brought them. As if there won’t ever be a corrupt politician. Shallow people are easily tainted by unwarranted attention and fawning, and hookers for the warpervs.

there’s still the revolving door to wingnut welfare. don’t know how to get rid of that one.

He forgot ponies for all.

As far as lobbying is concerned I would think it should be fairly easy to make it illegal for any person having served in Congress to lobby Congress for any reason other than one’s personal interest, like any other citizen. Such regulation might just provide a better crop of public servants.

Uh-huh. And he plans to accomplish this…how?

(crickets)

I’ll have a mountain-bred Appaloosa, please.

not just lobbiests – corp positions too (for example, ceo of haliburton or how the clintons have somehow made $100 million since bill left office)

hence the need for a bs meter recalibration. i’m thinking i may just go for the new model with a log scale. *g*

Well, I don’t think we could regulate who corporations, or any other business, can hire. What we see now is not former congress critters going to work so much as CEO’s but as advisors or lobbyists with the corporations’ lobbying arm. Some who have prior corporate management experience, primarily from the Senate, return to corporate management but the others usually end up on K Street in one form or another. That’s my take on it, at least.

Simple regulation could arguably shut K Street down. That would be a great achievement for Congress. No loopholes, no bs, just good enforceable regulation.

agree it would be a big improvement and i’m for it. just don’t think it would be a perfect fix. there’s still lots of ways to get around it that aren’t so easy to regulate.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. That’s why we will always need the non-profit watchdog groups, e.g. Citizen Watch (off the top of my head). Perfect is an awfully hard goal. Leads to a lot of anxiety and heartbreak.

Oh yeah!

Millionaires stealing from the public cookie jar. Right in plain view.

McCain/Bush = what’s in your wallet?

A British Program explains it all very well. This is one part “The Long Johns -Last Laugh – George Parr – Subprime”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM

It makes everything very simple.