Posted on 10/14/2008 10:02:30 PM PDT by Reagan80
America's House and Senate, just a couple of short weeks ago, passed a law that was denounced by The American People, where representatives and senators were receiving calls 50:50 against - 50% "No" and 50% "Hell No".
In response, Wall Street banks employed spam-call-banks to "counter" this outpouring of public opinion and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies broke the law by sending out emails and other communications that essentially threatened their employees with loss of their job if they did not lobby for this horrible bill to be passed.
The bill passed after Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke threatened Congress with the imposition of Martial Law. Yeah. Tanks in the streets stuff. Literally.
This was disclosed in the well of the house by a few brave representatives, including Representative Sherman.
Were you told this was how Congress was browbeaten into passing this law? Were you told that Congress was essentially threatened that tanks would be deployed into our cities and towns if Congress did not pass this bad law that Paulson and Bernanke demanded?
Well, yes you were. Representative Sherman disclosed this fact in an impassioned speech in the Well of the House.
Did CNBC or CNN report that? No, but CSPAN did carry it.
If you watched.
(Excerpt) Read more at market-ticker.denninger.net ...
Actually, buying the banks (via preferred stock) is a wiser choice than buying dubious loans.
You’re right, it is the wiser choice...too bad Paulson/Bernanke didn’t think of it. This was a Euopean solution executed over a week or two. America followed suit with no leadership from anyone/anywhere.
Under threat of martial law ???
Tragic
There was a thread on here about this last week with that congressman. Transcript. He’s on the floor saying that in their private meetings they were warned of total meltdown. Calling out National Guard, etc.
Do you recall the weekend meeting with Congressional “leaders” where participants wouldn’t say exactly what had occurred, but that it left them ‘speechless’...? According to the author, the discussion was regarding Martial Law...
Here’s the thread. Sounds even worse than Marital Law. ;)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2099147/posts
OMG ........If such is true, to even get close to such a situation is complete failure of all we have tried to preserve IMO.
Damn..........
Martial law? That’s why we have the second amendment isn’t it?
Saying "If the economy collapsed this stuff could happen" isn't the same as threatening tanks in the street.
I guess Bush was doing the same when he said if we don't attack Iraq we could be under nuclear threat. I don't see that as BUSH threatening nuclear threat.
And no, America has not died.
Bookmarked and pissed !.......:o)
Thanks ya’ll !
here is another liberal economics article but I agree 100%
Paulson, bush, Bernake and our leaders have destroyed our country for a generation.
http://counterpunch.org/hudson10132008.html
Only if you don’t believe in the free market...
later
Since it was closed-door, there were all kinds of speculation and unverifiable rumors flying around about "what REALLY went on."
Paul, bernanke, Paulson haven’t destroyed the US...wait til Obama becomes prez and you’ll see wanton devastation that could usher in the New Civil War.
"...a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted 'No.' That's what I call fearmongering..." -- Rep. Sherman
Would you agree with "fearmongering"? It wasn't just "if the economy collapsed"...it was specifically, "if you take the time to write a good bill and don't pass this one."
Oh, please, everyone in Washington uses that kind of rhetoric, daily. "If this bill isn't passed, old people will be thrown into the street!" is probably a daily quotable. This old lady who wrote this piece needs to man up.
I know a couple of so-called Freepers that participated in the lobbying.
I’ve already mede up my mind, anyone who voted for the bailout whether they have a D or an R next to their name is going down, I’m voting against them. It’s that simple.
Maybe you don’t get C-Span. The lobbyist along with the bailout Nancy’s were out in force.
Yes, but it was a Dem who complained about that rhetoric. Now that's historic!
Alexander Cockburn, the editor of the website Counterpunch.org,
MARCH 12, 2002 : (COUNTERPUNCH & THE NATION'S ALEXANDER COCKBURN : TINFOIL ANTISEMITIC THEORIES - * my note: See VIPS, A FRONT FOR THE COUNTERPUNCH SITE; ANTHRAX, KRISTOF, VIPS) Another question raised by another blogger: Where is Kristof getting his information? In his latest column [July 2003], Kristof also approvingly notes that a group of “retired spooks” has written an open letter to Bush fingering Vice President Dick Cheney for blame over the Niger uranium controversy and calling for Cheney’s resignation.
What Kristof surely knew, but didn’t mention, and what blogger William Sjostrom discovered with a little digging, is that the group Kristof cites, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, has close ties to a left-wing site, Counterpunch, a newsletter and website run by Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, a man so far left he’s been called a Stalinist by fellow Nation columnist Eric Alterman. [My note : See Alexander Cockburn's buddy Congressman James Abourezk]
How close? Well, VIPS open letter appears on the Counterpunch website and you can reach VIPS at Counterpunch: Their email address is vips@counterpunch.org. Counterpunch has committed some dubious journalism in the past. [Nation columnist Alexander] Cockburn spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the March 12, 2002 edition of Counterpunch: “It's supposedly the third rail in journalism even to have a discussion of how much the Jews do control the media.…Certainly, there are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have raised discussions of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to an acrid level. ... --"Kristof’s Conspiratorial Sources," Times Watch for July 16, 2003
So who are these purported voices for "sanity" and against "politicization"? Blogger William Sjostrom did some online sleuthing, and here's what he found:
VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern's email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today [Tuesday] with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet's job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing UrgentCall, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell.
Mr. Cockburn is buds with James Abourezk :
* Abourezk ...former US Senator James Abourezk, founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and an outspoken supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is an IPS trustee.6[ 6 Broken Seals, Op cit., passim; Findley, P., They Dare to Speak Out, Lawrence HIll Books, Chicago, 1989. p. 98] via The Plot to Hijack the CIA, Anti-CommunistAnalyst.com
I don’t watch C-SPAN. I have better things to do than watch elected officials lie in real time.
Not when he was making it during the Bush Administration.
I Have to agree with you there.
And I’d rather own part of a bank than have tanks on the streets too.
Temporary ownership of a bank is no big deal, and they banks buy the shares back eventually. Society needs banks to function.
People just don’t understand what collapsed banking, a total freeze on all commerce will do to this country- FAST!
Maybe they just want to shoot somebody in the madness or something, I don’t know, but the last thing I would want to see is total societal collapse.
Tanks may not be so bad after all.
I remember Memphis, TN in the summer of 1976, when National Guard soldiers with automatic weapons were called out to patrol the city. In that case they were called out because the local firefighters were on strike, and fires mysteriously started springing up everywhere.
Folks, over the last month I have watched as some of you have melted down regarding government intervention in the markets.
Paulson and others rightly recognized severe problems. They briefed President Bush and Congress on the matter. They urged action on the part of Bush and Congress. Action was taken.
We sit here in the comfort of our homes quibbling over the actions that were needed to be taken. Some of us have determined that Paulson, Bernanke and others were manipulating the situation to implement some power play.
The assessment by many people is that capitalism has died, socialism is now the governing concept that drives our nation. Now it is charged (with a straight face I might add) that Paulson and Bush threatened to implement Martial Law if Congress didn’t act.
Good fricken grief! This needs to be recognized for what it is, and called openly what it is, complete and utter mind numbing childish women screaming in the streets hysteria. Get a hold of yourselves. Snap out of it.
A lot is being made about the Paulson claim that markets would crash if action wasn’t take. A lot is being made about his mention that martial law would have to be implemented if action wasn’t taken. Yes, well if you live in the greater Los Angeles area, you realize how fast things can melt down. And Paulson wasn’t being alarmist by any stretch of the imagination.
Let’s review for a moment.
What was the market level on 11/19/2008? For those who don’t remember it was about 11,350. What was the market on 10/11/2008? For the record, it was about 8,400. That’s a three thousand point drop in three weeks. And what happened to stop the fall? It was government intervention wasn’t it.
By telegraphing that the government was about to buy stakes in the banks in the United States and back all deposits, the government was able to avert further meltdown. And folks, that further meltdown would have in time have caused martial law to be implemented in the United States.
Those who are under the illusion that we live in the 1930s, and that our fellow citizens are still living by Hoyle rules, need to wake up and smell the roses.
We are probably going to see between eight and ten percent unemployment. That means that in some areas of our nation, namely places like South Central Los Angeles and other places, there will be something like fifteen to twenty percent unemployment. When that happens, you can accept or not the reality that the Democrats will demagogue the issue until there is civil unrest. Government officials like Maxine Waters, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi and others will race bait the issue to the point we will have civil unrest.
When that happens, what do you all expect to take place? And what would you have expected to take place if the government hadn’t taken action and the unemployment had reached fifteen to thirty percent overall? What could have happened if property values had wound up at 25% of what they were prior to the melt-down? Any guesses?
The problem for most of us is that we still don’t see what is going on behind the scenes, as we address these issues. Paulson, Bernanke, and company do. Big banks and lending institutions do. They can’t stay afloat if nobody is able to trust anyone else. If all banks freeze up, liquidity isn’t forthcoming, and the house of cards crashes, it is going to get very very ugly in the short term.
When the Savings and Loans went belly up in the 1980s, did we turn into a socialist state? No. The federal government stepped in and averted a serious problem. We didn’t turn into the U.S.S.R. Did we? The government helped keep things running smoothly. In time we simply forgot that id did.
That’s what the government is doing now. It is stepping in to help make things run smoothly. It is stepping in so martial law won’t be necessary. It isn’t threatening a hostile takeover to enforce a government takeover. It is trying to avert the serious social unrest that would take place if it didn’t do precisely what it is.
We can all quibble about what ill devised ideas got us to this point. We’ll probably come closer to agreeing over that than the fix. But let’s not turn our minds completely off in order to shout fire in the midst of a crowded room.
Cool heads are called for here. We needn’t demonize our leaders for doing something each of us would have been compelled to do, if it were our decision what to do to keep some sort of stability in this nation while we ride this out.
Even with the government intervention, we’re not out of the woods yet here. I pray the intervention helps. I would suggest we all should.
There is no way that one can justify this abhorrent governmental behavior in any way. It is directly and completely the opposite of what a Conservative would do, as is evidenced by nearly every Conservative in both Houses being four-square against it without notable exception.
Paulson and others rightly recognized severe problems.
Recognizing a problem when it is right at the door is hardly a compliment worthy feat.
They urged action on the part of Bush and Congress. Action was taken.
Action which was opposed by the people, by the market place, and by Conservatives.
By telegraphing that the government was about to buy stakes in the banks in the United States and back all deposits, the government was able to avert further meltdown. And folks, that further meltdown would have in time have caused martial law to be implemented in the United States.
You credit the "government fix" for this, when in large part, the elements of the fix are not yet (even now) in place. It is just as likely that the market found some footing and went back up for a spell.
Note I said some footing, not the bottom. I fully believe another plunge is on the way... The securities are still not fixed, the mortgages are still falling in value, and mortgagees are still defaulting. Foreclosures are continuing, nothing is fixed at all, and credit is still locked up tight.
What makes you think that a market that ate some $3.5T in a week is going to care about 700B that is going to be invested over the next few months? It ate that much in a day and a half.
The point remains that the House Conservatives were 100% right- This had no business coming out of the government. None whatsoever. All of their suggestions made for better solutions to liquidity, and anyone would know it.
As to the bailout itself, there is no reason whatsoever why the security companies, or the banks, could not disassemble the securities themselves (with gvt oversight), pull out the crap loans, and reassemble the securities. The banks themselves could float their bad loans collectively on a 100 yr stretch and never even feel it. Property on a super-long term like that is something investors will buy into... maybe not today, of course, but in 5 years when this is over, they could clean up selling stock against such a rollup. And it would not cost the citizen a thin dime.
It is uncomfortable for me to see the big-government solution, the socialist solution being so quickly praised, so blithely accepted as the only solution, the best solution, when Conservatism and freedom offer many ready solutions too, had they only been tried.
This is the dire result of globalism, and it's compassionate conservatism, which makes us all to ready to accept such scurrilous alternatives.
Respectfully,
roamer_1
Big banks and lending institutions do. They can’t stay afloat if nobody is able to trust anyone else. If all banks freeze up, liquidity isn’t forthcoming, and the house of cards crashes,...
not the bottom. I fully believe another plunge is on the way... The securities are still not fixed, the mortgages are still falling in value, and mortgagees are still defaulting. Foreclosures are continuing, nothing is fixed at all, and credit is still locked up tight.
Im not a high finance guy, but I do realize that the loss to the citizens' accounts in the course of a few days will take years [if ever] to be regained...this is a loss of the peoples 'power' in society/government...
$700 B is a drop in the bucket, and the fact that it was 'emergency' pushed thru, just to be approved and sit in a pile to spend later as needed only shows me that the whole thing was an election year grab...to hold power seats...
that money, in the grand scheme, will amount to merely papering over a real problem, that was created out of paper in the first place...the high finance industry has a trust problem, and without 'real' assets no amount of worthless paper is gonna 'fix' it...
the only lasting solution is gonna be when the true value of eveything is realized...the real bottom in essense...anything short of that will only prolong the damage and worsen it for our kids, and that is where this martial law stuff means something... IF they thought that they were in that much danger [of the people, not a few street thugs] then we truly know how deep into CON-gress the cancer resides... my .02 FWIW...
My angst is regarding the comments “martial law” ....”national guard in the streets” etc ......:o)
As to this bailout.., I was a mark to market sort of solution versus the end of capitalism thang !
Stay safe D1 !
Yeah. Including tanks in the street, apparently called in by Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke.
Is that the plaintive call of the loon I hear?
Dunno....just know that such a threat was NOT real or the fiscal dilemma was not going to be the issue ! To declare martial law in these United States in this day and age for all but all out war or a nation wide natural disaster is the end !
To threaten such for anything else angers me .....polidiots are !
Never fear FRiend, your credz here certainly run deep enough to allow you to be contrarian with impunity, if you would so desire- Not that I expect you to exercise that ability to any great degree, but the odd quirk here and there just adds to your charm. :D
If you will note, many Democrats were also against this bailout.
I might point out that I did not limit myself to the House Republicans, who are not all Conservatives... Many may not have paid attention to the cost the Democrats have been made to endure in order to gain their control. In part, that includes a fair increase of our old friends, the blue dog Democrats... I pointedly include them when I say Conservatives rather than Republicans, as many of them vote more conservatively than the more leftist Republicans do.
Dennis Kucinich was against this bailout. You have to scratch your head a bit on that one. Dennis isn't your knee jerk Conservative.
While I don't agree with Kucinich on much, I do give him props for calling a spade a spade (he calls them as he sees them). His vote was true to form, and to be expected. He said it was a corporate bailout (and it was), and he and the other liberal die-hard anti-corporatist types voted their beliefs and stuck to their guns. I disagree with them, but I respect them for not caving in.
None the less, we found ourselves in a perdicatment, and we did have to determine what to do about it.
That is not the problem I have with them. It is the solution they came up with that is misguided. That a Republican (of any stripe) would entertain such tripe is a sure indication of how far away from Conservatism the Republicans have fallen. This is *not* the House of Reagan anymore.
I don't want to get sidetracked, but I did want to mention that the people including Conservatives aren't always right.
A point well taken, but this is not a desire, or a conditional matter. this is a matter of raw and basic principle. Conservative principles are always right, nearly without fail.
I believe there was a pshychological component that enhanced the natural rebound.
Yet today, right back in the pooper. And Asia opening down another 10% as of this writing.
The financial ghurus that I have seen addressing the actions of the Fed this week, have been to a man supportive of the action. Some of them have stated they would have made an additional tweak or two, but they are supportive.
I will tell you here and now that it will not be enough, or that if it is enough, it is only forestalling the inevitable. That is the basic free market principle that you are denying, or rather, that they are denying, and you are believing...
One cannot socialize loss without socializing profit too. There cannot be risk without loss, and there cannot be profit without risk. When the market wants to find the bottom, you must let it.
Attempts to prop it up will inevitably fail, and in the attempt, the bubble gets bigger, the fall harder, and the pain more severe.
I would draw you attention here:
FR:"Plan B: Last chance to avoid financial system failure"
In the above article, it is already declared that the bailout is a failure- and it is not even off the ground yet... One may as well shovel all this money into a blast furnace for all the good it will do, and that is the point I am making, FRiend.
More importantly, banks that see that type of cash influx, are going to be much more confident when contemplating interbank lending. Banks that are lending to each other will spur liquidity throughout the system. That is a sound policy to implement.
But the banks who have received that liquidity are *not* lending it out:
FR:"Banking: From Bad To Worse?"
Have the Republicans put them into a bill? Have they been submitted to Pelosi for implementation? They should do it. I would support them.
I would too. No, the House Conservatives have been neutered by McCain and the RINOs in the Senate. Any power they had vaporized the minute bipartisanship was realized. That is the difficulty in supporting this bipartisan industrial-sized socialist enema. Had the Republicans held out, real fixes would have been implemented.
I don't think they would immediately fix liquidity. The question is, who was going to infuse cash into the banking system to spur liquidity? The only entity with that deep of pockets was the government.
Not at all! Do you really suppose all that corporate money out in failing banks abroad would not be better off at home? Dropping repatriation taxes at all levels and removing capital gains taxes, along with guaranteeing all deposits would shake loose MOUNTAINS of cash. Way more than the government can come up with. Instant boom.
If you REALLY want a boom, turn loose industry from environmental restrictions, Commit to Driling for our own fuel sources, flat tax on retail purchases, remove income tax, and you would see a prosperity like nothing ever seen before.
I think the government didn't have any choice but to take this action.
I think that is *not* true.
You mention here that the banks could restructure loans fixing the situaiton themselves. And then you talk about 'in five years when this is over', as if that would be when this was over. If the banks took five years to fix this, we would be in a depression years before the fix was realized.
No, you misunderstand me. If the banks removed the faulty loans from the securities, that would fix the securities, restoring some 95% of the equity value back to the banks' net worth.
The banks take the hit on the bad loans. They cannot get their money back on sale, because the properties are not worth what the bank is in them for. But they do own them. So they roll them into a long term "security" and let folks buy in- the bet being that the properties are going to be worth more in 50\100 years than they are now.
The way the deal works, the property isn't the point, the bet is. So the bet becomes the deal, and they can actually get far more money for the bet than they actually ever could for the property in the first place. It is the same thing that got them in trouble, turned to their advantage.
In the mean time, they (the banks) have collectively financed the bad properties across the term for a pittance.
That is what I meant in simple terms. I said that no one would want to "buy in" right now, but that in 5 years, when these troubles were over, and more optimists were around, they would be inclined to take the bet. That is, the banks would have to sit on the bad mortgages for a while before attempting to do what I suggest.
That does not mean they could not set them up in a collective account and spread the payment (hit) around... The main thing right now is to remove the bad mortgages from the securities that determine the banks' worth or equity. That can be done right away.
Shoot, it would be easy enough to shovel all the bad debt int one holding company and have it go bankrupt... Poof! no more problem. Dirty pool, to be sure, but still better the shareholder than the citizen.
Anotherwords, the 40% of businesses that had gone under, would take twenty years to rebuild. This would jeopardize current families, the current social security liquidity, the medicare system, and our national defense services. That would be tantamount to national suicide.
If it is going to go, it will go, and there is nothing this side of God himself that will stop it from happening. Printing more money, as they are doing now will not stop it. Socializing banks, as they will do next, will not stop it. Changing currency, which will be next, will not stop it. All of those things ARE national suicide. Nothing stops it. Take the hit and start picking up the pieces. "First rule of holes", and all that.
IMO it is the result of socialist polices intended to provide homes to people who could not afford them. That is the compassionate Conservatism, the socialist takeover that you folks seem to miss, when throwing the term around.
Certainly, I recognize that dreadful mistake, largely due to socialist liberalism- the Democrats are largely to blame... But it took the acquiescence of those "compassionate conservatives" those Bakerite Republican administrations to make it happen.
And I dare say (though I do not know) that the Democrats are not market-savvy enough to have dreamed up these security roll-up schemes that wound up making bad mortgages such a bad and global problem. I would suppose there were RINO Republicans helping the business community realize these marketing schemes. Making money out of re-doubling credit is right up their alley.
Do we let the whole economic system flounder because serious mistakes were made, or do we stabalize the system, then correct what was screwed up in the first place?
You do not understand me yet. We must take the least action possible to correct this, other than to correct the equity problems to shake loose the equity. The only other action we can take is to make the means available for the market to correct itself. It MUST find it's bottom on it's own. Credit MUST dry up, as it is FALSE. The market is demanding what is true. What I am saying is that we cannot stabilize it- It will only stabilize itself.
Now, removing taxes, that is a plus. That is not taking action to stabilize. That is not reigning in, controlling, that is knocking out the chocks. Screwing with interest rates, printing money, Making banks loan money, bailing out security companies, that is reigning in, controlling.
My guess is our "Conservatives" in Congress will allow enterprises like ACORN to continue. They will continue to urge unsound real estate loans so the poor can have a home. In short, they will continue to screw the system into the ground while the fix is being utilized to take hold and help out.
Oh, I think it is FAR beyond that. I think that you are going to see a world wide socialized banking system come out of this. This is the launching pad for the Globalist New World Order in earnest. Free markets will go the way of free trade, and a bastardized version thereof will be established. I think Republicans will be rattled by what they have supported and caused to be birthed.
Thanks Roamer. We're probably not going to agree on this, but at least you know where I am coming from.
Thanks to you too, DoughtyOne. The beauty part of this is that events will tell the tale. I think we will come to agree, you and I, because as this unfolds, the truth, and the consequences, will become apparent enough. We'll just have to let it run out and see where we end up.
Take care.
You too.
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