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Just breaking on MSNBC:
About 10:00 p.m. Thursday night, Barney Frank emerged from a Congressional meeting to announce that House Republicans had scuttled the negotiations over the financial bailout plan.
Following the ill-advised White House photo-op/meeting this afternoon, Congressional negotiators working on the financial bailout met this evening to restart the discussions. But according to Frank, House Republican Bachus handed the attendees a one page description of an alternative proposal -- presumably the same one John Boehner and Senator McCain discussed at the White House meeting earlier today. But instead of staying to discuss the proposal, the representative left, claiming he had no authority to negotiate for his House principals, who did not attend. [Updated: More on the meeting here.]
So at this point, conservative House Republicans have essentially rejected their own President's proposal, scuttled a week's worth of bipartisan talks between the Administration and Congressional leadership, and simply dropped into the mix a proposal that, when introduced at the White House meeting earlier Thursday, was described as "unworkable" by Secretary Paulson. That proposal reportedly includes even more deregulation and further tax breaks to the financial sector, plus a prayer that Wall Street can rescue itself if the restraints are removed.
Okay, John McCain. You own this mess. You went to Washington to get a solution that didn't require your help, after telling the nation repeatedly that this was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and that we had to solve it to save the economy. If the crisis worsens in the next few days -- as in major banks failing -- and you don't get your crazies in line, you've just seized ownership of a possible financial meltdown.
First Iraq, now the economy. Country first.
Update: New poll says Americans can support a rescue plan, just not Bush's.
photo by essjay
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Great. No Bailout!!!
This is leadership??!!
caught between Iraq and a house of cards.
I’m glad that the bailout isn’t happening but this is his mess now so show us your leadership McCain
Could be the best of both worlds, no bailout and McCain takes the blame for any resulting fallout.
Evening, Scarecrow. I can’t believe it. I am glued to my computer today. I feel like when we were all watching NOLA drown, only this time it’s the whole country, maybe more. And the Keystone Kops are doing their usual routine.
Great news, if true. Gives some time to really think things through and come up with a much better plan. Markets will tank for a while, but I’d prefer an Obama administration to take this up in January.
McCain is daft.
MORE VERTIBRATE DEMOCRATS!
For those who have been following, when did McC. and Obama leave the WH?
This is what the modern Republican Party is all about, fucking things up beyond all recognition. McCain, like Dubya before him, is the poster child for movement conservatism. On the up side, I am increasingly convinced that no action is the best action regarding the Wall Street bailout. I do think that congress needs to do something to force renegotiation of failing mortgages (reduces asset devaluation by keeping houses off the market and gets lenders more return on their investment than foreclosure). they also need to implement a strict regulatory structure for the entire financial sector, not just depository banks. Finally they need to break up the really big outfits like Bank of America. Too big to fail is too big to exist.
Hey you guys this is bailout is not the solution. We need to let the bad institutions and actors fail.
We need to keep our powder dry for what is to come. Recession is here but it is just beginning.
We need to save our 700 billion so we have something left to stimulate the economy later when it gets worse.
This guy makes a lot of sense to me.
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.....ilout-2328
We should be protecting the people that spend the money in the economy. Ordinary taxpayers and depositors of these institutions. We should not be propping up the walking dead banks and financial institutions that got us in to this.
Furthermore, the sky is falling rhetoric from McBush is not helping. People in panic will not help the situation.
He just did. He laid a nice big, smelly turd in the punch bowl.
This was probably because McDopie’s handlers, recognizing that they have a losing hand, feel the debate tomorrow will kill McDopie’s campaign, so they’d rather delay the bailout so as to have an excuse to scuttle the debate.
i liked it that Shelby held up the 200 economists paper,stating the best and brightest said no bailout
One can only hope. I was convinced this was a rope a dope.
Of course it is not over…
thanks scarecrow
McClatchy headline on this story: Bush’s bailout meeting ends in disarray; McCain gets blame
More at the link from Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and others.
Except the last I heard the debate is going on with or without him. If he doesn’t show, he will look like the jackass he is.
conservative House Republicans have essentially rejected their own President’s proposal, scuttled a week’s worth of talks between the Administration and Congressional leadership, and simply dropped into the mix a proposal that, when introduced at the White House meeting earlier Thursday, was described as “unworkable” by Secretary Paulson.
IOW, one fine day’s work by the Repubs.
high fives all ’round?
Obama needs to hammer McCain if he is behind this apparent failure of the negotiations.
At this point, I’m not sure why it should matter whether McShame turns up for the debate or not. I’ve never seen a human being literally fuck himself before.
worst president evah
So is Jane paying you all over time for the extra Bailout, cancel the debate coverage? I wasn’t expecting this much news until the last few weeks of the election:)
I think it is a strong possibility that they were attempting to pin this unpopular plan on the Dems.
They didn’t count on the traditional “Conservatives” crying “foul”. Exploding the deficit is not the way to go.
I don’t understand why the Dems didn’t see this from the get-go.
So obvious.
Somebody get a rope!
IMNSHO no legislation means financial calamity. GM borrowed money at 7% yesterday. The Dems seemed to have a tranche set up committing “only” 250 billion and help for Main St as well.
This afternoon. McCain reportedly sat there mute the entire time, then at the end when there appeared to be some kind of consensus, mentioned the alternative plan proposed by House Republicans, while DECLINING to indicate whether he supports it. Chaos ensued.
oh yeah…imo
Hope the protesters line the steps of the Capital and drum out the
ears of the Republicans as they leave tonight and be there in the
morning to harass them all day.
May be time to send MsShame tons of emails….what a sore loser if he does
not attend the debate…..he will be a total loser then….and the press
is ready to hang him anyway.
Moesie
Let’s hope the rest of America sees it that way
What I read at first: “Caught between Iraq and a house of cads.
It actually seems more accurate for some reason.
Signed
A new JP Morgan account holder, kind of hoping they bought my mortgage too.
We could not have asked for better. They may well have slit their own scrawny throats.
Watching TDS. Awesome
I think this may actually qualify for autoratfucking.
narsicisstic neoNaploeanic shmuck
Except McCain-Palin would be worse. The old fucker is crazy and Palin is even crazier. We gotta start calling McCain not McSame but McWorse.
21-7 Beavers
I just wish I could believe they’d limit the blast radius when they self-immolate.
I’m still trying to get a handle on what’s going on - have the Critters and Gooper Senators finally untethered themselves from Chimpy, or are they vainly fronting for McCheese?
Maybe, but the markets also seem to have some innate resiliency. Earlier, eCAHN was marveling at how quickly Wall Street had implemented a workaround for the short-sell ban.
They didn’t count on the traditional “Conservatives” crying “foul”. Exploding the deficit is not the way to go.
“George W. Who? Never heard of him.”
“But whoever he is, you can bet your ass I’m gonna campaign against that SOB in a few weeks….”
Has anyone looked at McCain’s *cough* plan for the bailout and figured out what it would cost America? Is it better or worse than Paulson’s plan?
i concur
707
Thank you. What a mess. Apparently the meeting for tonight has also ended.
Higher interest rates are necessary. There has been too much loose money. That is what got us to where we are.
The interest rates going up is because risk is being repriced. This is all normal except that it isn’t.
What I mean is that what is happening is normal it is just that the scope is very large because the looseness of the money has been far too long and far too deep into the economy.
Protect normal people who have money saved.
The paradigm has changed. Austerity will rule the day. People will have to begin living within their means. That is not necesarily a bad thing.
It also means people who have money should get more to put it at risk in investments.
Do you think Palin is upset that McShame is robbing her of her chance to be the one who destroys his presidential aspirations?
Better that they do it to themselves than for it to be done to them.
supposedly i heard,Paulson nixxed it,and it was for more deregulation…i heard
I just wish I could believe they’d limit the blast radius when they self-immolate.
Just keep your head up and your eyes open. They’re pretty easy to spot coming….
McCain is about as qualified to contribute to economic policy decisions as I am, with the important difference that I am not running for president.
The “alternative” plan offered by McCain/Boehner could be a ruse. The thing that McCain is in DC to theatrically push back. Then we get a watered down and flawed Dodd bail out. That’s some fetid Republican politics.
A good DKos diary on this:
Don’t Take the Bait
Unfortunately, as Krugman points out over at his blog, any of the bailout plans proposed will not really address the major underlying problems, which means we the taxpayers will get screwed and the economy will still be in trouble. We need to back off and think this thing through before doing anything. From what Krugman, Delong, and others have said, it sounds like the feds buying up equity interest in the troubled firms and imposing strict regulatory controls might help, but the Rethugs will never buy into that.
There are $11.1T real-estate mortgages in the U.S., and one percent of them are in default. Therefore, the government cover all the credit-default swaps on them for $111B. In an earlier thread, I pointed this out to Ian, and he responded:
I don’t understand that. Is he saying that for every dollar of real-estate that a bank held mortgages on, they were allowed to loan out, say, ten dollars in unsecured business loans? Is he is saying that the public is being asked to cover unsecured business loans that are in default, for which they can get nothing in return? Is that where the $700B is intended to go?
Ah, the old “Double-reverse unrequited inter-party ratfuck.”
I have been thinking that she is going to be really mad that his mess has about ended her run. She’s been dreaming big.
she will definately need an EXORCISM after this campaign…hope she goes back to her ignominious past and stays there
Boner likes McCheese but the House Goopers loathe him.
Oh good god, they would never do that. This is going to be the dirtiest possible bomb.
Insurance seems to be the plan.
To which I have one thing to say. How can you buy insurance to something that has already happened?
These assets have already started to fall in value. The only unsure thing is how much farther they will fall. Who is going to sell insurance for that and how will that make the banks have money to lend?
Oh and has anyone ever heard of CDSs? That is insurance on the toxic crap. Oh and it is not regulated and it is the next big shoe to drop.
Though I have not seen the plan I think it is bullshit because of what I said above.
what Obama said today
I agree. But at this point, McCheese actually looks worse than Chimpy. Where to turn must be their never-ending quandary.
The failure or the impending disaster…
Good question. What is the US supposedly buying with the bailout money? Why can’t the money be spent to nationalize all outstanding credit default swaps at the purchase price, and then forbid the USG from ever collecting on them? I mean to simply buy the all bets that have been placed that people will default on their mortgages. That would remove the risk, would it not?
Critters and McCrazy are all desperately trying to distance themselves from Mr. Less Popular than Genital Warts in order to win their elections. The available evidence indicates that all concerned will cheerfully slit each other’s throats at the drop of a dime.
know a good priest? preacher?
McCain cynical idea is to tap into the resentment Main Street has for Wall Street. The Bush charade today was, in my opinion, the first step in Karl Rove throwing his BFF Georgie under the bus. In RoveWorld posing Dubya with Pelosi and Reid proves that Bush was really a Democrat all along. Real repubs still support the miracle of an unfettered free economy…until you
needdeserve a bailout.The Paulson, Boehner, conservativ Republican, McCain, Frank, and Dodd plans were all fucked up. The Dodd plan was probably the least bad but was still pretty awful. None of these guys seem to have a clue. It is all fake. It is all made up. And none of it will work.
As for the politics, Boehner probably dropped that grenade just to let McCain off the hook for tomorrow night’s debate. After all, that’s more important than avoiding complete financial collapse. We are being killed by blank, boneheaded stupidity but what can we expect in the Age of Stupid?
Of course they were.
Get ready for Mittmo Romnutz to ride in on his trusty steed, which was just let out of it’s cage attached to his car’s roof, and use his wonder twin powers of financial management to make everything better again. It’s happening soon.
I don’t think she is bright enough to figure out just how totally fucked they are. Did you see that slow motion train wreck on the CBS Evening News tonight? Almost too painful to watch.
Ah, the old “Double-reverse unrequited inter-party ratfuck.”
An oldie but a goodie…
Palin has a witch doctor. That should work!
Answer: because there are $45T of OTC credit-default swaps out there. Yes, you read correctly, that is indeed a “T”.
Obama has played McCain well re: McCain’s fake campaign suspension. I could see a guy like Kerry falling for it.
Oo ee, oo ah ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang.
There, that should do it.
she has the Kenyan guy,but he might make her eat…Rat droppings i suspect
Actually, I suspect you may be more qualified. 8-)
This is too complex. Is Crazy, the same as Lucy yanking the ball from Charlie Brown? And the Democrats are Charlie Brown?
to stupid i add,GREEDY ,POWER HUNGRY
The good news is you can stick a fork in McCain-Palin. The bad news is Obama is going to inherent this mess. They fucking do it every time.
dugg
We may be headed towards a very serious recession, or worse, no matter what, and the jockeying now is to determine which of these parties gets blamed for it for the next 30 years.
Don’t know why we didn’t attend to this sooner.
Digg it here.
But that’s the payoff value of the bets, right, not the amount of the bets that were placed? I’m saying: Let’s nationalize those, by fiat, but only pay the purchase price. So the holders don’t lose anything, but we stop the bets from ever being collected.
i sad Mittens would show up,but BAIN(offshore all jobs) Cap,is a noose around his balls i fear
They were softball questions, too.
I’ll have to take your word for it. Iowa City is a black hole for TV reception; I’d have to pay for cable to even watch any of the networks other than (ugh) Faux.
It’s like the Republicans are having some kind of a contest to show which of them is the craziest. It’s getting hard to keep up: Paulson, Bush, McCain, Boehner, Palin. If the country was half as smart as these guys are batshit crazy, we could have solved the financial meltdown in 30 seconds as well as curing cancer and the common cold.
Afraid I might have created a superfluous Digg entry, Suzanne.
Big time. Did you see the look of horror on Couric’s face when she realized she was interviewing a zombie?
Wigwam:
As I understand it the problem is that the Credit Default Swaps are doubled and trippled over. They are not a pure insurance of the underlying asset. They are a bet. So anyone can make the bet whether they hold the asset or not.
Credit Default Swaps are completely unregulated (yes completely) (notice no one is trying to change that right now!). So what results when firms start to fail is what they call counterparty risk. That is all the parties that held the debt of that company get affected, but because of the CDSs it is not just the ones that bought the debt it is also the different parties that were on either side of the CDSs. Some of them have to pay and some will get paid. The number of companies/firms/mutual funds/countries affected is totally arbitrary depending on who made the bets (CDSs) on the failing company.
Now place this whole complicated mess in the middle of a recession that started with the worst housing slide since the Great Depression. So all these institutions are already losing some money on their bad bets on real estate. They are already losing money because fewer and fewer people are able to pay their bills on time or at all because of all the reasons we know. Then the CDSs start to hit. The payouts are huge and the banks are teetering on the brink of insolvency. And all of them know it so they don’t want to lend whatever money is left to anyone!
Oh and now the Chinese don’t want to lend to us either. I am thinking in no small part because our Pres just got on TV and sad we are in a crisis so that he could get a giant bailout for his Wall Street Cronies.
Sorry so long…
But that raises a question: How do you derive $45T of credit-default swaps from $11.1T of real mortgages? The answer is that I don’t really know, but I have a conjecture. Say I loan you money to purchase a house, and then I buy a swap from Fred to insure me against the event that you default. Perhaps I’m not so all that confident of Fred’s long-term solvency, so I buy I insure against Fred defaulting by purchasing a swap from Sam against the event that Fred defaults on the first swap.
That way I have two swaps derived from your mortgage, and I can keep on do more.
she is pathetically dense,but also…mean as an angry hornet
Bush bootlicker Bob Schieffer is the (a) debate moderator?
The Republicans can jockey all they want. Deregulation was the horse they rode in on, and they own this shitpile.
Couric: “Mocked?”
Palin: “Bird?”
interviewing a gelatin fruit salad imo
Won’t matter. The wound is too deep now.
As long as the thing is referred to as “700 Billion Bailout”, regardless how the costs are recovered or not, it is not going to be welcomed by tax payers (who also happen to not be wall street). Not only does the plan need to be repackaged it needs to be relabeled.
I wonder what her expression would have been like if somebody had whispered in her earphone that the zombie enjoys a certain popularity with hardcore Republican voters?
Mean and stupid is a dangerous combination. Saw a lot of it growing up in Oklahoma.
no problem - yours is the one up top so we will use that one…
yup,Caligula jr has same malady
It’s like the Republicans are having some kind of a contest to show which of them is the craziest.
wow - who would be qualified to be a judge on that contest?
otoh, it’s got prime-time teevee hit written all over it….
Couric’s true calling might be of therapist. Tell me how you felt about that. I was concerned that Couric would throw softball questions, which she did, but I didn’t realize that those softball questions could be Palin down.
Right. So let’s unroll all that craziness by giving the holders of all those CDS back their premiums, taking over title to the CDS’ themselves, and then frickin’ burning the things so they can never be presented for collection.
and where is Sarahs newborn????????
……………………..
……………………………………crickets
Oops! My bad. I see your point.
It would be interesting to know what the total purchase price of all those swaps has been. I got the aggregate amount insured from the “credit default swap” entry of the Wikipedia, but I don’t think I saw the aggregate purchase price. But I don’t think that money is creating the problem, in the sense that it is not actually owed to anyone and has already been figured into the balance sheets of the swaps’ sellers.
The newest reality show for MTV. Has everything. Sex, drugs & alcohol, outrageous stupidity, and batshit crazy. It will be an instant hit.
Couldn’t agree more.
A couple huge rednecks wanted to beat-up my 17-year-old brother while my family was eating breakfast at a Denny’s in Tulsa, circa 1977 because he had long hair. Good times…
yes, been thinking that as well
although apparently I see now it was a symbiotic relationship all along - he used their noise whenever he needed his maverick cred ratcheted
but these cretins love ‘the kill‘ - too tempting for them so I guess they’ll join up - and look how they’re totally willing to fuck their masters Bush and Cheney - am lovin’ the symmetry
How about pitchforks and torches? Seriously, this shit is treasonous. The cheney regime needs to be shipped off to the Hague post haste. And that little bitch LIEberman as well.
wigwam, it is why most of the higher order derivatives need to be nullified. They are air based on air. As long as they are treated as real, there is no solution to the problems of the financial system. They are the biggest bubble of all. We need to pull the plug on them. The whole theory of complex derivatives was fatally flawed because it eliminated moral hazard and rewarded stupid decisions.
Actually Couric impressed me, she was able to focus and press using extremely simple language, and by doing so managed to show Caribou Barbie to all and sundry for the severely underdeveloped human being that she so clearly, indeed so depressingly, is.
Yes. Not only that but you don’t even have to own the asset. So JPMorgan can bet that thier banking client will default on its bonds that JPMorgan doesn’t own and that he may actually have insider information about.
Key words: