I hope we get commentary and information to put the current equity stake and interest obligated bailouts in better historical perspective.

How does it look relative to other specific bailouts, wars and disasters when adjusted for inflation and GDP?

What is the US and other nations track records with other bailouts, did they work, were they paid back?

I think the government should get shares in every company it bails out equal to the value of Treasury funds. They can to be sold at a later date and distributed to replenish taxpayers contributions as a bonus for saving the gamblers and speculators who are being rescued. There should be a harsher payback for bad behavior, mistake or not.

If this is bad as the Bush Government says it is then why is it that Germany, Japan, and other European countries are refusing to support the bailout. That is our problem made by our financial system?

German chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken out on the wall street bailout.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/22/marketturmoil.creditcrunch

From today’s Guardian:

The German government persisted today in its refusal to participate in Washington’s proposed bailout package. Anger is rife in Germany that the US-fuelled crisis is likely to severely dent Germany’s continued economic recovery after years of downturn.

Joachim Poss of the governing coalition partner, the Social Democrats, said: “The Americans cannot hold Germany responsible for its own failure and arrogance.”

German chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken out on the wall street bailout.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/22/marketturmoil.creditcrunch

I agree with everything she said and I don’t see why Germany (or any other country) should feel obligated to dig us out of a mess we created ourselves.

I also find it interesting that neither McCain nor Obama want to raise taxes to pay for this huge extra financial burden. It’s exactly that sort of irresponsibility – buying stuff without making provisions to pay for it – that got everyone into this mess in the first place. Instead we’re going to other countries hat-in-hand. Don’t Americans have any national pride at all? It’s pathetic!

Now, this is creative problem solving!

I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It
Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S.
Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So
200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000
right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket. A husband and
wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family? Pay off your
mortgage – housing crisis solved. Repay college loans – what a great boost to
new grads Put away money for college – it’ll be there Save in a bank – create
money to loan to entrepreneurs. Buy a new car – create jobs Invest in the market
– capital drives growth Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care
improves Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost
their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And
of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it…instead of trickling
out a puny $1000.00 ( “vote buy” ) economic incentive that is being proposed by
one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S
Citizen 18+!

As for AIG – liquidate it. Sell off its parts. Let American General go back to
being American General. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain
hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.”

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We Deserve
It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC.

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5
Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh…I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

erm… you better check your math.

. . . Maybe this is how we got into this mess in the first place. The husband says to the wife, “Dear, according to my calculations we can buy this 4000 square foot, all-new construction, 5 bedroom, 4 bath colonial for a monthly payment of only $3.95! We can pay for that on my substitute math-teacher’s salary!”

One thing that should be highly regulated or completely eliminated is the sub prime mortgage.

In Japan they have subsidized housing that is well built well maintained and is rented out based on your income.

The idea that all Americans should own a house is absurd.

If you can’t afford a standard mortgage you should not be buying a house.

I think what we can take from other countries such as Germany and Japan is how they deal with housing.

Dear Nick (about your 10:26 AM posting and calculations)….

Your math is wrong, unfortunately… $85 billion divided by about 200 million American adults gets each of us about $425. That may buy food and gas for a month, if we are discount shoppers, but that’s about it!

Now if we take Paulson’s “Mother of All Bailouts” amount of $700 billion, and divide it by 200 million, we do a bit better: about $3500 for every adult. That may buy us discount food and gas for perhaps an entire year, if we really pinch pennies!!

. . . Maybe this is how we got into this mess in the first place. The husband says to the wife, “Dear, according to my calculations we can buy this 4000 square foot, all-new construction, 5 bedroom, 4 bath colonial for a monthly payment of only $3.95! We can pay for that on my substitute math-teacher’s salary!”

Peter Nelson, you’re half-right. You leave out the part about how the husband and wife got the mortgage with almost no salary to pay for it. In the olden days, when banks actually held mortgages and were left holding the bag if they weren’t paid off, the bank would have advised Husband and Wife to take a long walk off a short pier. Nowadays (meaning, before August 2007), the mortgage underwriter would have said to Husband and Wife, “sign on the dotted line”, and then chopped the mortgage up into little pieces of Mortgage-Backed Securities and pushed them upstream to the next sucker.

Why do we only hear socialist voices on this tax-payer supported program? Big government money goes to promote… wait for it… more big government. Talk about a snowball effect, with a downward spiral twist.

The permanent guest is a die-hard socialist, and it seems the guests frequently tell him, “I totally agree with you,” as the guest today did.

Nowadays (meaning, before August 2007), the mortgage underwriter would have said to Husband and Wife, “sign on the dotted line”,

But that doesn’t mean they had to. My credit card company keeps upping my credit limit – I think it’s $11,000 now. I’ve never put more than $2-3K on it, and I always pay it off in full every month so I pay no interest charges. The fact that the bank is WILLING to let me get into debt up to my ears doesn’t mean I’m obliged to.

Why do we only hear socialist voices on this tax-payer supported program?

You mean socialists like Bush and Bernanke and Paulson? Is this one of those secret cabal conspiracy theories? Tell us more.

A CRUEL ANALOGY

Remember 9/11, how the towers came down, they it was the pancake effect, one floor falling on top of the other and the lower floor unable to bear the weight gave in also and so on, the whole thing crashed.

It all goes back to the question I asked Senator Richard Shelby, that “when the US government borrows money to function, in whose pockets that money ends up at“? of course the question is rhetorical since I at least already know the answer. It is still a good question, it made it on the evening news of my local station.

For Senator Shelby, and all others who may care, today I will give you the answer, but first, the United States government does not borrow the money form her self, NO!. The treasury issues debt obligations that are bought by other banks and financial institutions and foreign countries and institutions, then these are sold to the federal reserve, then federal reserve issues money against the debt, in other words, we owe the money to the federal reserve which is a private bank, in some instances the debt obligations may be held by the foreigners themselves.!!!!

The United States, or any other government is there to collect taxes for its operations, even at the threat and or use of force it must collect enough revenues to pay for the day to day operations and even may have reserves for unforeseen incidences. Since Reagan days, and “the deficits don’t matter” we have borrowed and borrowed and borrowed some more for a lifestyle that was not sustainable. All the while this “money”, “ the future tax revenues from the US population” have been used to support the global economic boom, hoarding of “wealth” by individuals and “bankers” who have devised more and more ingenious scams “financial instruments” to steal money from the government and each other.

Today as the pyramid scheme is collapsing, under the burden of its own crap load, the congress, the senate and the president are running out to shore up the system that is already doomed. A seven hundred billion dollar planned bailout will only the bring back the sharks out of hiding, again. Obviously there is a bottom to the housing market collapse, and there is “liquidity” since there is six trillion dollars (remember the United States deficit?) sitting on the sidelines.

As I have said before, no one creates a job to provide a living for another, jobs that are needed Will be created, houses that are needed will be built, houses that will be built Will be of reasonable size and price, to live in not to be used as a ATM card. Cars will be built for transportation and not as symbols of sexual expression. And we will have to stop eating our babies!

But then again, a people hooked on the “reality shows” may find it too much to “get real”.

As I have said before, no one creates a job to provide a living for another, jobs that are needed Will be created, houses that are needed will be built, houses that will be built Will be of reasonable size and price, to live in not to be used as a ATM card. Cars will be built for transportation and not as symbols of sexual expression. And we will have to stop eating our babies!

I don’t eat babies because they give me gas, but I have no idea what the rest of that poetry is supposed to mean. Human beings have never just bought or made things for simple pragmatic reasons and they never will. This is Earth, not Vulcan. My wife and I live in a large open concept contemporary house, surely bigger than what two people need to simply eat and sleep in. But it gives her a place to host a small chamber orchestra and it gives me a place to do dance photography. Since it’s almost paid-off who cares whether it’s an extravagance? And while my current car is just basic 4WD SUV transportation, my previous one was a sports car that I used to race at SCCA solo races. They were both bought for cash, so again, who cares?

The point is not to avoid extravagance; the point is to pay for it. I’d be perfectly happy with a $700 billion plan (maybe not this one) but I’d like to see taxes raised to pay for it.

I was listening to this program this morning and one of the callers said something to the effect that the rest of the world owed us. You know we go around the world doing stuff and giving away money.

I would like to debunk this notion.
1: Our government started the Iraq war, know one asked us to over through Saddam Hussan.
The conflict in Afghanistan is a joint effort with NATO.

2: We do give countries aid, however these are pretty poor countries. Our foreign aid policies have nothing to do with this anyway.

3: People who believe in this kind of jingoism should do a little homework as most of our national debt is financed by foreign countries. The mere fact that they are not calling dumping US treasury bonds is helping us right now.

4: This kind thinking is why the rest of the world dislikes us.

Up until the most recent months, President Bush, Treasure Secretary Paulson, and the Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke repeatedly told us lies on TV that the economy of U.S. is fundamentally strong and that we can ride things out and there won’t have a recession. Now all of a sudden, they think the failing investment banks and short selling of Wall Street are big problems that require bold actions to correct it. I don’t know about Bush, but Paulson and Bernanke are supposedly very smart business men from Harvard and MIT, and Paulson was the former chairman for Goldman Sachs and they both know how Wall Street works. These people are supposed to be the US economy watch dogs. They must have seen this coming months or even years ago. The problem might have been easily fixed earlier or cost much less. Now they sound like the high-pressure used car salesman pushing Congress to make a quick decision on this trillion-dollar bailout. Who knows what else coming next? Again, like buying a used car, maybe there are more fundamental financial problems that they haven’t told us. Why should we trust these people who lied to us repeatedly to come up with a solution that is good for us?

Sounds to me like you liberals need another lesson from Groucho on how things work in this country.

See, when money is taken from the middle classes and given to the upper classes by tax cuts, no-bid corporate contracts, war-profiteering, deregulation, highjacked energy costs, or just brazen fraud, it’s called the Invisible Hand of the Market.

After the Invisible Hand takes it, it sort of trickles down to you. That’s how this works.

Then if you want to take it and go build a bridge or a school or something, that’s your business.

Those of you questioning this plan. Let me ask you. Do you really believe that Bush and Paulson would ask for a trillion dollars if it wasn’t what was best for you?

Why should we trust these people who lied to us repeatedly to come up with a solution that is good for us?

It’s not clear that we should.

I’m leaning more and more toward a bypass of the banks and some kind of direct aid to the individual mortgage holders. Mainly because it should be easier to tell exactly where we stand that way. There’s only a finite number of mortgages in the US and only a finite number of those are in trouble. Offer a refinancing deal to anyone whose outanding balance is > 90% of their house’s fair-market value. That would allow a 10% cushion against further price drops and would probably stop the prices from dropping any further.

Or alternatively, just buy up all the currently foreclosed properties and destroy them. This would take them off the housing market and reduce the glut of unsold property. It would also eliminate a major problem of blight faced by many communities.

Either one of these should cost less than $700 billion and avoid the problem of having to deal with the banks or buying up any of their toxic paper.

Finally we need to raise taxes to PAY for all this! neither Obama nor McCain have the guts to talk about this!

Groucho, man. Right on. One redeeming quality of this system is it does not use terror and secret police to subdue its citizens, unlike the country I am from. There is no mass GULAG camps, no one knocks on your door in the middle of the night to take you away. No need for any of that anymore. Somehow it was figured out that money can get you to the same place – control of the populace. The money puts the right people in the position to control the vast pot of money called the US treasury. The next step is to scare people into war or a massive economic spending package. Pretty cool set up.

Great shows on the economy lately, I would only leave
the comment not talked about too much on these shows.
That is the world wild corruption of Elites, in America
its CEO’s pay and the huge money of the top 1% along
with a corrupt corporations like Enron etc, and the
the whole banking sector. In China and Russia the Elites are tiny and very wealthy as well, the poor workers in China are working 6 or 7 days a week 10 to 12 hours a day.
The third world of course is even worse than this. Democracy is becoming a joke the world over with fixed
elections in the US, Bush 2000, Bush 2004 becoming the norm, Russia has gone back to a dictatorship and China
of course never left. This world economic system does
not deserve to survive with makes me think that an economic meltdown is not only right but the only real
way to change things. A depression will awaken forces of change that will reshape the world, since the changes can’t happen any other way politcally.

but the only real
way to change things. A depression will awaken forces of change that will reshape the world, since the changes can’t happen any other way politcally

That sort of thinking is irresponsible and immoral.

The fact is that the vast majority of Americans still have a job, a roof over their heads, food on the table, etc.

In a depression there would be vastly greater suffering than today, which you would know if you’ve ever studied history. It’s immoral to wish greater suffering on people just so you MIGHT achieve some salubrious political change. History suggests that usually when people are hungry and desperate they do not choose positive change, but instead choose repressive and violent change such as the French Revolution, the Fascists or the Communists. Why gamble on that? Things are bad, but they could be a whole lot worse.

Peter – sometimes shock therapy is precisely what a country needs. Take the USSR when it collapsed. Some countries tried to insulate its population from pains of transition. They are still backward dictatorships. Others took a balder approach and now they are members of the European Union. The people in power right now are simply not trustworthy. Why are you buying into this crap about the economic armageddon? Is there anything to back it up? We have already been through this in the run up to Iraq war.

For a depression to be called one unemployment would have to be at least 25% or more. During the Great Depression I think the figure was something like a third of the people of working age in the country at that time were unemployed. Not mention there was no FDIC.

I am beginning to think something is not right here.
TO many countries are not acting, and I keep hearing from some economist and politicians on both sides of the aisle that they are not buying it.

One economist mentioned on News Hour that AIG was waiting for the government bailout and had turned down offers from the private sector thinking they would get a better deal.

I Like the idea of letting them take loans, until they all pay off the debt they can’t make dividends or have bonus’s.

This way if they make it fine, if not we the tax payers do not lose a thing.