Posted on 09/27/2008 2:44:06 PM PDT by cammie
As I write late on Thursday evening, some conservative Republican senators and representatives are opposing the Paulson bailout plan because they think that the government should not intervene in the market—that it is better to let financial institutions that took risks that turned out badly for them bear the consequences of their actions. As one of the freest of free marketeers, I want to explain why that thinking is wrong-headed....
Continues on First Things at the URL above.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Besides some socialist claiming to be a conservative. Where was the conservative part of that article?
Military is an efficiently ran government entity? 12oo dollar toilet seats are effiecient?
I may be wrong, but I think that this is because it is written in our Constitution.
The plan has a poison ACORN in it.
Screw Paulson and his ransom. He needs to man up and pull the trigger.
I;ve made same arguments on several threads, until the insertion of 20% to ACORN from FIRST PROFITS, instead of taxpapers debt being relieved....that has to come out of that bill now to get my support again.
If you support it regardless of Acorn, you are no conservative and should vacate this forum immediately.
Government is NEVER the answer. Period. If you feel the need to insert government simply because it seems scary economically, you aren’t a conservative and wandered into the wrong place.
I only wish he had added that the foundations of the uncertainty was not “free markets”, but two giant government puffed-up, government-backed elephants (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) whose operations skewed the “markets” to take in the excess in “insecurity” (toxic assets) that THEIR operations helped create; and at an unsupportable rate and volume that only those two government elephants could generate; which means their excess - not “free markets” - helped feed and boost the real estate boom, from which the current devaluation of assets is a result.
You are not Jim Robinson, and I have been a part of FR for more than 8 years. If you can’t disagree with fellow conservatives, then you are the same as Sadaam Hussein.
[23] On July 20, 2008, after the failure of Indymac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, “it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.” [24]
On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.[25] On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.[26]
In late September of 2008, Paulson, along with Ben Bernanke and Christopher Cox, led the effort to help financial firms by agreeing to use US$700 billion dollars to purchase bad debt they had incurred.[27] Discussing his decision to take action, Paulson said: “It just happened dramatically. There was only one way we could reassure the markets and deal with a very significant and broad-based freezing of the credit market. There was no political calculus. It was overwhelmingly obvious.”[28]
On September 19, 2008, Paulson called for the u.S. government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more
to rescue financial firms from nonperforming mortgages that threaten the stability of those firms.[29]
You fail at responding. Go socialize the financial system elsewhere.
Leave it to us free market supporters and American patriots.
I don't think Crazieman is dead........
This is not a plan to save the Republic.
It is a wealth redistribution plan to scam hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars dollied up as an emergency fix for the financial business.
It is the first really big play to convert the country to socialism - no more nibbling around the edges.
That is why democrats are so dead set on keeping the handouts to La Raza and ACORN in place.
The true function of the plan is to line the pockets of the friends of elite republicans and democrats on Wall Street and the democrats favorite leftist subversive groups at the cost of the 1/3 of the people who actually pay some income tax.
It will pass sooner or later - I just hope that most republicans are wise enough to vote no.
I don’t think John McCain is listening to the people he wants to vote for him (again!).
If he supports this plan he will lose the election by a huge margin.
If you support it regardless of Acorn, you are no conservative and should vacate this forum immediately.
**************
So now we need to pass your test to prove we are conservative?? I think not. Perhaps you need to pass a basic test in economics to post on this forum!!
As the article states, “even the most conservative economists recognize that markets are imperfect and that there are certain things that the government can do more efficiently than the market.”
If you don’t agree with that statement, I would challenge you to find ONE conservative economist to support your position. I would also like to know the qualifications of said economist.
Grow up and learn to support your knee jerk opinions with FACTS!!
Don’t need to.
You’re wrong. Period.
Government breaks everything it touches, vis a vis, free market.
If you think otherwise, you aren’t conservative. Get off the forum.
I am not delusional. There will need to be trillions in purchases and those securities will be worthless. That will need to be matched by trillions more in writedowns by the banks. If not, then that means simply that the credit bubble wasn't unwound, but extended and even increased (if there is indeed a "profit"). What that means is there will an even larger crash later or destruction of the currency. There are no other choices.
Financial institutions all over the world are holding various kinds of mortgage-backed securities, and everyone knows that these securities are worth less than people paid for them.
How much less, however, no one knows for sure. That will ultimately depend on what percent of homeowners default on their mortgages and how much the lenders recover when they foreclose on the loans.
Think about it. The Treasury is going to have their bright minds "evaluate" the prices of these complex mortgage tranches to ensure that you and I don't overpay for them.
Well, if the problem is that the banks won't loan to each other because "they don't know what their balance sheets are worth", why haven't those bright minds been hired to figure that out for lo, these many months already???
The answer is obvious. They already have a pretty good guess, but they don't really want to KNOW.
If they knew, they'd have to take the hit, and some of them are so suicidally leveraged that the hit would push them over.
Much better to have the values remain a Great Mystery until after Paulson buys the tranches.
Better for everyone except you and me, that is.
You’re wrong. Period.
***********
Wow!! I am underwhelmed by the logic in your argument. I am not going anywhere. Again, I ask you to back up your statements with FACTS!! Since when did you become the final arbitrator of all things conservative?
If he supports the bailout he is not a conservative in any manner or degree.
Only Socialist trash supports the Paulson plan.
Yes.
Because I know conservatism. I live it. I breathe it. I dream it. I exist in it.
You sir, are no conservative. Go vote for Obama.
the only thing government need to do is protect savings in banks. As long as thats safe, no bailout is needed, as main street is protected
My personal opinion is that the markets would be better off without them.
IMO they were typical government run institutions and a convenient vehicle for funneling money to political hacks and cronies. You can bet your first born that allot of not so external sources are pressuring the FBI to not be quite so thorough in their investigation of these entities.
Stop the bailout, de-list these pigs, and lets get back to business.
The problem will arise when the Democratic congress estimates how much they might make and starts spending the money before it is in. In a rational world we should take the profit and pay down the debt.
Just blew you whole bogus statement.
If any seller thinks that price is too low, then the seller can chose not to sell. If enough sellers withhold their supply from the market, then relative scarcity will force the price up.
Yes the actual free market and investing, sometimes the investment fails, so be it eat the loss.
Enjoy your Depression, folks. I stand by my statement about anti-interventionist hysteria.
touche!
Now that statement meets the definition of hysteria, which was suppose to happen everyday this past week, still waiting for the jumping out of the windows part. Will buy popcorn and watch, should be a boom in the popcorn market.
While you may be right, the failure to pass the plan will introduce a great deal of uncertainty into the markets. Uncertainty benefits Obama, as the polls results have swung sharply in his favor over the past 10 days. The failure to pass this plan will lead to an Obama victory. Do you want Obama to win?
I don’t think I detected any indication that he supports this “plan”. As far as I know (not very far, for sure) this is a democrat scheme. McCain is mainly providing moral support to the “R”s in the house, who want nothing to do with it, and using his well known skills of raising hell in the senate. This thing will either change radically, or die a flaming death.(my guess)
I’m against the bailout because:
1. Paulson hasn’t been right yet.
2. Paulson suddenly needed 700B when it became clear that his old company was in trouble.
3. Paulson is a democrat;
4. The market will adjust without the bailout.
5. The bailout is nothing less than a boondoggle for speculators who got stuck with a pig in a poke.
6. We’ll have at least three more years of problems with or without the bailout. The bailout could actually make things worse in the long run.
According to #22 Crazieman's opinion is that if you do not agree with him you should vote for Obama. So I guess he DOES want Obama to win, if the alternative is to besmirch the purity of Crazieman's ideological vision.
The Republicans will pass this bill with most of Paulson’s Plan, or a hybrid of it, so get off your high horse. You are as far right as the Huffington Post or Daily Kos is far crazy left. Craziman-fits you.
None of us wants a Paulson’s Plan or an Insurance Plan but NEITHER YOU nor anyone else can seperate what happens on Wall Street from Main St...those of us who understand how this works actually have some real concerns about young families with children and what this really means to them and their 401k’s, jobs, inability to pay their mortgages.
I’m a free market capitalist, and my home is paid for...we’ll survive and we don’t have money in stock market, but that’s not how it is for a lot of Main Street people, when Wall Street goes...the Great Depression should give you a clue. It may not be enough, but at least it’s a try to prevent a National Security Risk. It’s about a whole lot more than a few banks. I served my country in the Navy and I’m more Patriotic than you ever thought of being. So don’t be questioning people’s patriotism. I am skeptical of the Paulson Plan or the Insurance Plan, as it may already be too late....but standing around sucking your thumb will not solve this problem.
Maybe you are like the vultures who want it to crash so they can buy really low stocks, at the expense of most americans. That’s not right to profit from the backs of the workers, so you can get your pockets lined.
Now for the demrats who are padding this, they are unpatriotic. They are a large part of this problem, but so are Republicans:
1. President Clinton signed the bill that repealed the Glass-Steagle Act, and implement a new bill that allowed DEREGULATION in 1999, which began an ERA of risk for banks. Both Repubs and Dems voted for it.
2. Starting in 2001 Greenspan began a time of too low interest rates. Then in 2003 the House Repubs passed a bill to reinstate some regulation lost in 1999, but it died at Senate without enough support to get it to floor.
3.In 2004 several banks went to SEC to get “exemptions” to lend $40 for every $1 in RESERVE. They got it, and they were Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
4.Dems bullied everyone for O down loans to people who could not repay from Freddie Mac and Fanny May...hence corruption and a FBI investigation....billions in foreclosures.
5. Around same time of 2003-2005 credit card companies began to change people’s interest rates from low rate, if they were late even one day on one card. All cards then raised the rate to 18-35%, and then they changed their biling from every thirty days to 20-25 days...getting lots more compounding interest for the year. It was in the tiny, tiny print giving legal ability to do so.
6. Cities, towns, and counties began reappraising homes for more taxes, and all services went up ..water, sewer, garbage collection.
7. All of the above challenged many homeowners who weren’t deadbeats to meet a mortgage paymnet based on a previous group of numbers that had radically changed.
That’s what happened. You can punish everyone if you want, but that’s as selfish as the rich who make huge risks on wall street, and big ‘naked short sales’ that drive banks under. Sure we can make it through a big depression, in 10-15 years. Don’t believe it? Your perogative, but you aren’t more patriotic than anyone else, nor more free market, just DOGMATIC.
By the way...The Congress did nothing right before the 1929 stock market crash.
“If you don’t agree with that statement, I would challenge you to find ONE conservative economist to support your position.” Here you go dude!
Ok http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2092019/posts
Excuse me? National defense??
The government can't even protect and secure our borders.
Most like myself believe government has no desire to secure our borders and sovereignty and the government is totally complicit andd have aided and abetted this illegal violent invasion of millions.
He talks about National defense??
We now have upwards of 40 million in this country illegally. During war yet.
National defense?
This epic invasion alone has all but completely undermined and compromised our entire system in every respect.
“If he supports the bailout he is not a conservative in any manner or degree. Only Socialist trash supports the Paulson plan.”
Roger that!
Sooner or later, softly or brutally, the old nag is going to come into her own.
I wish there was a slow, gentle way for it to happen. And if I thought this bailout was going to be that way, I would be all in favor. Truly, I would.
But I just don't see that it that way. If we do get a plan passed that avoids an immediate meltdown, America will call up that hot chick for one more -last- fling.
It’s very simple:
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” -—Ludwig Von Mises
or are you more enlightened than Mises?
To the extent of which they are allowed, and that’s why passing more regulation that was eliminated is necessary. How will this turn out if we don’t...I don’t know.
How will it turn out if we do........I don’t know.
The difference between success and failure is risk.
I’e always been an optimist. Pessimist say let’s not even try, or’s over, no way.
I say “my god can do far exceeding, abundantly more than I can think or ask”. Ephesians 3:20
No Mises was a pessimist. I am an optimist.
ROFLMTO...no, but the reference was to a “dictator”, or control freak, who made sure eveyone believed as he did or died. And he’s worried about being a free market capitalist, so what part of ‘free’ doesn’t he understand?
By the way, we would have recovered if Hoover hadn’t hiked taxes and implemented protectionism.
Learn your history you anti-free market communist.
Nice try but I will smash you with conservatism. Forever.
You really should stay on your medicine.
As the following quote states, it was 1932 when Hoover raised taxes...the stock market crash was in 1929. I know my history, and your points are irrational. Maybe some more reasonable action should have been taken in 1929, prior to the crash. I believe in preventive maintenance, preventive health care, and intervention when necessary.
Calling people names like communist, and socialist are first grade playground tactics...grow up.
QUOTE ON GREAT DEPRESSION:
“In 1932, Republican president, Herbert Hoover, with the support of the newly elected Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, passed the largest peacetime tax increase in the history of the United States. Marginal income tax rates were raised from 1.5% to 4% at the low end and from 25% to 63% at the top of the scale. A huge tax increase by any measure.”
Snore
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.