visual stylings by phoenix woman
Yum. Get ‘em while they’re hot:
Instead of taking a single approach, the Obama administration plans to divide assets and other loans into three categories, each with its own solution, according to sources familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details are not finalized.
The government would buy and hold on to those assets whose falling prices are putting banks under the most pressure. Officials want to limit these purchases because of the vast expense.
The centerpiece of the plan would be a guarantee to limit losses on a second group of troubled assets that can be kept by the banks because they have more stable prices.
And it would allow banks to retain and profit from their healthiest assets.
Which means you, America, get shit. Do you get to have better healthcare, more public transit, clean air, better schools or more jobs if the banks you’ve invested so heavily in make money?
No! The bankers who built this shitpile get to keep that. You just get the losses.
Capping executive salaries is supposed to give you a case of the warm’n'fuzzies, but it’s nothing more than a bait-and-switch. Borosage:
Why is Washington filled with faux populist promises about curbing bonuses, capping executive pay, forcing banks to lend, even as the managers that drove the banks off the cliff are still keeping their jobs, collecting their paychecks and issuing their bonuses and dividends?
One reason might be that these same bankers and financiers are leading donors to both political parties. Thus far, they’ve been getting an amazing return on investment with a few million in political contributions yielding hundreds of billions to keep them breathing.
Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, according to Politico has announced that: "We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to our best to preserve that system."
I guess Warren Buffet is the only one who deserves return on investment. You’re supposed to be some rube who gets suckered in by Claire McCaskill’s carny hucksterism who thinks you’re really getting something because Wall Street "compensation" is limited. Like you’re just too goddamn dumb to know they still get to keep all the profits anyway.
You just get shitty schools and no healthcare and dirty air and dirtier water because if you were to get anything in return for your investment, why I guess that would be socialism. And Jim Cooper, who has the House by the short and curlies, wants to cut medicare and raid social security because they’re just so fiscally irresponsible we cannot continue like this and it looks like he and our new Commerce Secretary are going to get their way.
Open wide America, because Larry’s Barbecue Grill is just getting fired up.
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Hot damn…shitburgers!
I can haz shitburger?
Morning Jane and Puppies!
Beg pardon, Jane, but WHO SEZ? Anonymous, shameonus. I get sick of mr/ms anony real fast. is that just me whistling in my ice cave here?
Who has an alternative (not necessarily better) plan and what is it?
Yeah, I just loved McCaskill following up her CEO pay limits, with her ode to bipartisanship because we have serious business to attend to like entitlements.
The only entitlements that need to be curbed are those enjoyed by our elected officials and their well-heeled donors.
I just can’t tell you how thrilled — thrilled! — I am to be able to do my part to chip in $4000 for a nice shower curtain for underpriviliged CEOs.
i may be a rube, but i’m catching on. and i’m pissed.
Have you not been reading the collected works of Ian Welsh??? Go back through the last few months of FDL and read up…
that entitlements bit set off alarms big time.
exactly!
Having complained about Obama’s economics picks right from the getgo, all I have to say now is: what did you expect?
Good Morning Jane and Firedogs,
ah yes, Change we can believe in
i guess i’m a rube who’s not catching on.
take it away wizard-puppies.
The last 6 words of that sentence are missing: “…after the taxpayers are paid back”.
Jane! I wish we could get you to express yourself more fully. *g* That said, where are the additional very public voices riding herd on all of this? Sometimes I feel as though I have to crawl into the Net to find out anything even close to the truth of what’s happening out there. Most people don’t bother to do that. Takes more than a nanosecond to read and inwardly digest. Not gonna happen. Point? Where is the loud, public outrage over this gang bang? And yes, leftdcin72, what is the better plan? I. Don’t. Know.
You don’t have a drop of rube in you and if you’re pissed, I’m pissed. Now then. What to do?
Yeah, I was stunned. Jane’s got it right this is all bait and switch kabuki. With. OUR. Money.
Just asking, but don’t we own the banks already?
There’s a prez election in a little less than 4 years.
There needs to be a special transaction tax or profit tax instituted to run until these funds are fully repaid. I prefer a profit tax on the financial institutions because a transaction tax would just be passed onto the consumers. A profit tax would keep the haunchos incomes limited until all moneys are recouped.
would suggest you start reading our friend and Book Salon Guest Dean Baker
it’s a difficult problem and i don’t expect perfection – just something good enough that is designed to help the real economy and us, not the paper economy and wall street.
there are a ton of economists and commenters with better ideas than the jokers making the plans. stiglitz, galbraith, krugman, baker, klein, greider, david cay johnson are just a few and here there is hugh, ian and stirling who have been analyzing and making proposals here for months.
and btw, we knew that summers, rubin, furman et al were trouble from day one. these people, just like phil gramm, have a track record.
Should our most eloquent, informed folks (pups, I’m talking about) be making YouTubes that speak to these issues so we can distribute them far and wide? I am absolutely baffled about how to build a fire under the American public. We have been conditioned to being a passel of Eeyores, slumped down in our chairs, saying, “Well . . . nothin’ I can do about it. There goes our money, Maude. Eeyup. (sigh) Being screwed. Eeyup. Anything mindless on the teevee? (sigh)”
Laurence Summers, White House Economic Advisor, was mentored by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin during the Clinton administration.
Rubin was not only directly responsible for the hyper-aggressive strategies that led directly to the demise of Citibank, he is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.
So are nine of Obama’s recent key appointments:
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3443
Coincidence?
Not.
Oy!
who are you supporting next time around?
Why do we need to save irresponsible banks?
Let their shareholders PAY their “debts” – they OWN the company.
This is nothing short of a transfer of more money to people who were irresponsible from people who had nothing to due with it and, WORSE, were and are victims of these banks predatory practices such as 30% interests rates.
Just being snarky, as I think there’s not much we can do. Looks like we’ll have the same bad choice next time as we had this time.
Feels like Canterbury’s “tricks”.
Oh how I wish this batch of tricks were just as innocent and well placed as “Candy’s” equine rant.
We’ll have to muddle through.
You need to read
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com
for a good perspective on what a mess we are in
The fact of the matter is these “toxic assets” are not worth anything.
Let’s see what they are…
Good DAWG a-mite-y!?! Has it been two, TWO weeks already?!
tell the truth as best as i can (and listen to others for when i have it wrong).
there have to be enough of us pissed off to do something. that is what organizing from the ground up is – not vague promises for hope and change from the top.
i’m open for suggestions, but lining up to support fucked up plans to feed me shit sandwiches is not an option.
And then what? We’ll be back to square one… a choice between a Republican and a Democrat, both wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporatocracy.
We’ve got to find a way to fight these b*st*rds now. From what I gathered yesterday, the Daschle debacle generated a lot of calls to congressional offices. Perhaps we need to organize a phone campaign to put some real pressure on OUR elected officials. I wonder what the Fed would do if their switchboard was so swamped with calls they couldn’t get anything else done?
Righto. And everything that’s going on in DC is kabuki designed to let the perps get away with it.
that’s not a democratic representative responsive government. that’s just a recipe for chosing a temporary dictator from the list we’re given.
Living in NY, my senators & reps are intimately involved in making sure their campaign contributors get off scott free.
You meaning all of us, or just the untutored such as myself?
Reading would only flesh out the ugly details that already make my skin crawl when I’m trying to sleep at night.
I’m off to PT (therapy) with the mister honeypie. Back later. I’ll expect all pending problems to be solved ere I return.
Getstay bizzy, gang. No, I’m not yelling. Did you not read #28?P. E. A. C. E.
waaaaaaaaaa
Borosage, as cited by Jane, makes a modicum of sense to my addled brain.
you’ve known friends to die in a stupid war. was that your response then?
or don’t you think it matters when someone dies for lack of medical care because of stupid economic decisions?
Michel Chusudovsky reveals the entire agenda of the IMF – your banker.
This is part of what’s radically wrong right now. No. One. Listens. At least, no one in “power.” As noted in the earlier thread, government seems to exist to serve the manufacturers (e.g., big bidness, banks, Wall Street) and not the public. How did we let that happen? How far back in our country’s history do we have to go to find things operating a different way?
Wellstone Action (formed after Paul Wellstone’s death) is rooted in grassroots organizing and action. Not as take-no-prisoners as Saul Alinsky (though that may be what’s called for here). They’re non-partisan (to the extent any organization with Wellstone as part of its name can be non-partisan, and whose ED took a leave to run Obama’s campaign in MN).
And so what? There are working models already in place to guide us. FDL is a powerful base. How to combine the two and take it to the streets, so to speak?
The preceding cameo appearance was our very own Raven! *g*
That’s below the belt.
it sure does seem to be the case.
this is bullshit
the government should let those banks fall and make them sell off their assets at bargain basement
then allow for the bought price will be what’s owed not the borrowed price, that way the lenders who raped and pillaged our economy get the correct price on their rediculous investments
we do NOT need “mega banks” not can we afford to have them!
we need those mega banks to fall, allow all the branches to buy the assets at bargain basement price
now here’s what we REALLY need to do;
nationalise the fed
then we can adjust loan rates based on the need for that industry to survive, we can use “the prime” as a revenue source and it will take the place of some taxes
Luv me some Markopolos. That guy is great. More of him!
sorry about my continued rant but how the HELL does bank of america buy up local banks and then have the NERVE to unhire their staff?
and then have the NERVE to get billions of my money for their rediculous failed banking model?
why the HELL do we need to keep bank of america in business?
let them FALL, let ALL the mega banks FALL, then get them OUT of the frigging gambling market and make them BANKS again and NOT gamblers
there’s a lot of lives at stake. if you have a better way for me to forcefully make that point, i’m open to suggestions.
I assume you can make your point – and heaven knows you do – without whacking someone else. Especially regarding a somewhat sensitive issue. Do you think your point is so important that you get to do that?
amen. would love to see him as gov regulator – also greenberger from yesterday’s hearing on financial derivatives.
oops that reminds me, there is another house ag hearing starting now. want to record that one….
no, i don’t. was using raven’s comments to me over the past few months as a guide. probably not a good guide to use. will reconsider as you request.
Didn’t tune in yesterday, unfortunately.
well at least he’s consistent :D
you have mail
YO Cbl. Mad hippie love from G-Town.
Also why does the BofA buy Chinese banks while laying off workers here?
http://firedoglake.com/2008/12…..0-workers/
Other than being desperately unfair, the Summers plan won’t work. We are on the edge of depression and Summers and Geithner are still treating this as a hiccup that a wink and nod and lotsa and lotsa money to the banks will solve. There is no evidence that banks will use this bailout to return to normal lending practices. In fact, we have evidence that they won’t. This is not so much different from what the Fed has been doing in some of its programs. It let banks dump their crap on it and keep their good stuff and their maybe good maybe bad stuff. And this brought us to where we are now and it is not a place any of us want to be.
I keep thinking that there are still ways to avoid depression or long term stagnation but then I see Obama’s lame stimulus and then this demented scheme of Summers and I see depression in 18 months to two years.
You’re totally on target!! Mail back to you, and more later. Heading out now.
Why is no one talking about moral hazard any more?
I feel like we are back in Bushco world where up is down and down is up.
Where is the reform? When are they going to shut this catastrophe down?
I am speechless.
Hugh. We’re in a depression right now. Don’t wait for the news readers to tell you. Be sure to listen to that Chusudovsky lecture. It’s very matter of fact, and eye opening on a high level. What’s happening to us know is no different than what the IMF has done to ever country. It’s just our turn in their minds.
NPR reported that the plan will limit executive compensation to half a million dollars per year. Executives will not be able to exercise any stock options for a limited period. After having been nudged, Wells Fargo cancelled its employee bonus trip. It had booked rooms in the most expensive Vegas hotels. Wells Fargo had been spending millions of dollars on employee trips. An exclusive Jimmy Buffett concert was once had by over 1000 top employees and guests.
Admonitions about moral hazard are for chumps. It is all about privatizing profits and socializing losses.
Seriously, what is the difference between Bush and Obama on this? Both are backing policies that are robbing us blind to the benefit of the same group of the rich and powerful.
We’re all serfs for the banking class. Soon they’ll just make it official, tie us to the land and buy and sell us along with their other assets.
Of course, the way things are being mismanaged, once the woefully underfunded stimulus package fails society’s going to collapse either way. I suppose the banking types are relying on large walls and armed mercenaries to keep us out of their mansions? I honestly don’t know what, if any, longtime strategy they’re trying out here.
Sort of on the subject, check this out:
http://www.motherjones.com/new…..erapy.html
Should wake you right up.
How can we stop this freight train? If only the MSM would step up. That would be a good start. Unfortunately, they’re an integral part of the problem, and they ain’t about to rock the boat. Further, the more they bad-mouth “the blogosphere” (and they do), the more obvious it becomes that “the blogosphere” is hitting nerves. So keep digging on those nerves, the more, the better. It would seem to be one of the most powerful tools we have at this stage.
Each of us donate $10 with a nation wide drive, and buy a big portion of a MSM TV network (I was thinking of MSMBC, as it has the most (scary that is only 2) of the progressive shows).
If we have a majority or close to majority voting block, then we can start changing program material and maybe start educating the public. It would also let Obama and company know we are less than happy with his direction, and if he doesn’t give us more support, neither will we come next election.
ok. thought about it and trying again…. here goes:
……
i’m glad for everyone who is financially secure and doesn’t know or care about anyone who isn’t. but i do know people on the edge and a depression would v likely push them and their children over that edge.
for me it’s as if a bunch of americans were being sent off to fight a stupid war and some of us expressed our distress and anger because of our fear for those who may not be coming back. the comment of “waaaaaaaaaa” in response to that hypothetical case would be every bit as offensive to me as it was in this one.
……
was that any better?
As I said before, the MSM ain’t gonna rock the boat. They’re much too cozied up. If, for example, the jagoff cable “news” channels would do their jobs for just one month, it might make a dent. I won’t hold my breath.
I’m not sure it’s just a lack of imagination that is driving this, though Christie Romer is a bit conservative on the macroeconomics side. My guess is that the admin are under huge pressure from the still heavy hitters in the financial sector, who can do a lot of damage to the stimulus programme if they don’t get what they want.
We live in a plutocracy, not a democracy. Hard to get used to, but that’s the way it is, thanks to St Ronnie.
I appreciate your advice.
knut, do you think this was the case in the nineties also? that summers, rubin et al. were reacting to pressure from the heavy hitters then or were they true believers (in repeal of glass steagall, the CFMA, etc)
Hi Knut! (we had a drink near your place last summer :-) ). Hope you are well.
Is it time to start working for Obama’s defeat in 2012?
Rubin and Summers and the Clintons are the axiom of “all politics is local” and their locus is the financial industry and they were all Wall Street pavers and they, like Repubs, see politics as as a personal business opportunity.
Soros, Roubini, Krugman and Baker agree – n/rationalize the banks.
A good warning shot across the bow might be to defeat Harry Reid in 2010
That’s a given!
I’m not sure when Roubini came out for nationalization but we have been backing it here for months before the others named.
Okay, is it possible we’re overreacting just a touch here? I definitely agree that the heads of the failing banks should be replaced, but I don’t see how that prevents the Obama adminstration from improving health care, environmental regulations, providing more jobs, etc. And I definitely think that when people start talking about primarying Obama in 2012 based on an anonymously-sourced report of a not-yet-finalized plan, it may be time for them take a little nap.
Max Bauccus, a Dem in the Senate, has already said healthcare reform is going to have to wait. I guess they think since Americans have been waiting since 1947 for universal health care what’ a little longer?
We are doing the math and it does not add up. Obama himself has said if he does not fix the economy then he will be a one-termer. There is a lot of wishful thinking still about Obama and how we will all wake up someday soon and he will suddenly be a progressive. The problem is that we already have sufficient evidence to begin predicting where he is going and hos (un)successful he will be. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share.
As a former carny in my youth, I resent the McCaskill comparison – at least we would throw a stuffed animal to the rubes giving up their dollars.
First do no harm, second don’t trust the shitburgers until new FDA parasitology inspectors approve them.
Okay. I’m back. Mr. Daisy drove hisownself to PT, with me just as co-pilot! Progress is a good good thing. stress level in our household has eased a bit. ;->
Thanks for the personalized opinion poll, eCAHN. I have a lot of respect for you.
What. would. You. Do. to fix humpty dumpty here in which Obama Inc. inherits a mess of such gigantic proportions?
Please forgive me and just point me in the right direction if you have already dealt with this. I’ve been in and out at a somewhat random pace not entirely of my own doing.
Is the bushco ‘legacy’ even remotely to be conceived as fixable?
If so, ????????????how please, just a little outline would be instructive.
I am truly a self-made rube. What considerable education that passed by my nose eons ago has been faded and frazzled by this modern brand of greed and mayhem.
Would appreciate your advice & tutoring if an as you wish, and/or pointing my nose to some pithy links-for-dummies.
Thanks in advance. No hurry.
I have his book on order at the library and can’t wait to get it.
Half a million dollars. Where does this money the CEO’s get paid come from? That needs to be talked about in a big way. How many fees and how how the fees are need to be decussed. That have raped our retirements funds, charged exorbiate interest rates and fees on everything from home loans to credit cards to bank withdrawels fees. Lets discuss the real problem and the wages will have to come down.
how high the fees are needs to be discussed.
Sorry, I need to use preview.
Well alrighty then! *hauls out checkbook, savings acct statement, and starts cutting slit in side of mattress, dons shoes and winter downies, and heads out the door with fist full of withdrawal slips*
Note to self: invest in potato eyes, onion sets, seed of cabbage carrots, kale, choy, viable soybean and sunflower, netting for blueberry and raspberries, sunchokes, and oregano sprouts.
Dig down through snow to snip catnip treats, onion sprouts,sunchokes and kale, & check around for end-of-season carrots, as well as a fist full of parsley.
Check.
offshore havens of the packrats who cannot get enough, ever, to be satisfied.
TWO WEEKS AND COUNTING!?! dammit
Let’s just eat our own and have done with it.
You want the gizzard or the tail feathers?
Just call me “Candy”
yank that rope again and the halter’s breaking, and i’m gone.
Jane wrote:
At least on the original TARP monies invested in warrants (&such) there will be some return if the banks ever get profitable.
I wonder how they plan to price the worst of the ‘troubled assets’. That’s always been the sticking point. Heck, it’s the one which is the fundamental problem.
I say confiscate the troubled assets (mortgages, mortgage-backed assets perhaps) using imminent domain and sort out the good from the bad, returning the good to banks, fixing the bad and reselling that into the market to give some percentage, perhaps 50% back to the original banks and keeping the rest to help pay for the whole mess.
I guess Summers & Co don’t want to be seen as too forceful since it’s only the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The very largest banks may be despicable, but without them the economy would probably collapse within a few days. Even helping them as govt has isn’t solving the problem, it’s just a pushing ‘a car out of gasoline’ to keep things going until you can get gasoline in it. The stimulus bill is a bit of gasoline too.
Sell them to whom? Nobody wants to buy them. That’s why there’s no market in them and no current pricing.
That’s why it’s crucial how govt decides what price it will pay for them.
Who will it hurt most, the taxpayer or the banks?
BTW, there are actual houses behind those mortgages, so there is some value, just not as much as at the height of the bubble.
Right now that’s not going to work. But BUT after reregulation and once we’re out of this mess there should be plans to do some trust busting a la Teddy Roosevelt. “Too big to fail” is definitely “too big to exist.”
When the nation’s (and really the world’s) economy is at stake the greater moral hazard is to stand by and, like Nero, watch it burn.
Bush (& Paulson) were picking winners and losers and just helping banks. Obama is just getting started and he’s trying to help from the consumption side. There is also a plan coming along which should deal with the fundamental problem of bad mortgages. Bush never touched that because he didn’t want to really fix the problem until a Dem was presiding.
I appreciate that and extend my apologies — do not want to offend carneys.