Free Republic

Take a look at the two blurry images below. Can you see an object hidden in each one? Before I give the answers, here’s another question: Do you feel a certain lack of control over events right now? These questions are not unrelated, according to a report in the new issue of Science by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky. The researchers found that when people were primed to feel out of control, they were more likely to see patterns where none exist. They would spot an object in each of the images above, even though only the image on the...

FULD, RICHARD NEW YORK,NY 10285 LEHMAN BROTHERS/MANAGING DIRECTOR 4/9/07 $10,000 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D) FULD, RICHARD NEW YORK,NY 10019 LEHMAN BROTHERS/CHAIRMAN AND CEO 1/28/08 $2,000 Reed, Jack (D) FULD, RICHARD S GREENWICH,CT 06831 LEHMAN BROTHERS/CHAIRMAN AND CEO 5/29/07 $2,300 Clinton, Hillary (D) FULD, RICHARD S JR GREENWICH,CT 06831 LEHMAN BROTHERS/CHAIRMAN AND CEO 10/19/07 $2,300 Clinton, Hillary (D) FULD, RICHARD S JR GREENWICH,CT 06831 LEHMAN BROTHERS/FIANCE 5/30/07 $2,300 Obama, Barack (D) FULD, RICHARD S JR GREENWICH,CT 06831 8/28/08 $-2,300 Clinton, Hillary (D) FULD, RICHARD S MR JR GREENWICH,CT 06831 10/22/07 $10,000 National Republican Senatorial Cmte (R) FULD, RICHARD S MR...

In order to promote a much smoother functioning of the financial system, it is paramount to distinguish between the immediate steps needed to cope with the present crisis and the long-run reforms needed to reduce the likelihood of future crises. Let's start with the short-run fixes. First of all, the magnitude of this financial disturbance should be placed in perspective. Although it is the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is a far smaller crisis, especially in terms of the effects on output and employment. The United States had about 25% unemployment during most...

Maybe I'm feeling masochistic today because I tuned into CSPAN, watching the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee grill Richard Fuld from Lehman Brothers. It seems obnoxious to listen the Democrats grill Fuld about compensation he received or paid to his employees over the years and the repeated leading questions asking for Fuld to blame things on a lack of regulation. The only guy on the committee who doesn't come across as an idiot is John Mica (R-Fla). Anyway, it crossed my mind that Fuld might be a Democrat. It seems most of the finance bigwigs and uber wealthy who...

The Federal Reserve is working with the US Treasury on plans for a dramatic move into unsecured lending in the hope that this extreme step could help bring credit markets back to life. As well as unsecured lending to banks, this could lead to the Fed directly purchasing commercial paper or funding a special purpose vehicle set up to do this. Any unsecured lending would be a radical departure for the Fed. Central banks the world over almost never make unsecured loans, and the Fed has never done so in its history. It would allow the Fed to address two...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US lawmakers Monday grilled the head of Lehman Brothers demanding he justify some 500 million dollars he had earned since 2000, as well as huge bonuses sought for top executives even as the bank failed.

OK. Let's go !!

Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, Lehman Bros CEO. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993-2007. Last year, Fuld earned about $45M, according an executive pay research company. ........ roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers........ Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and...

The recent bailout package being approved in the US Congress needs to be viewed in the context of the spurt in the accumulation of forex reserves of China by about $500 billion in the last six months to about $2 trillion in aggregate. This gargantuan build-up of forex reserves by China has strangely received very little attention of economists, policy analysts, currency traders and, of course, geo-strategists around the world. Why is China engaged in this exercise? What could be its implications on the on going global financial crisis? Could China trip the bailout package announced by the US last...

The oil crisis and the credit crunch mark the end of one epoch and the painful but promising beginnings of another that won't come from Wall Street or Washington.

European shares fell sharply in early trading on Monday, with banks slumping after a $700 billion bailout package from the U.S. wasn't matched by a coordinated effort from governments in Europe as they continued to shore up institutions on a piecemeal basis. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index fell 3.9% to 251.21, with a 5.2% drop for the banking index after an extraordinary weekend in which Germany backed its retail deposits.

What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful. ... And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I'll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression. For all his talk of being a maverick, McCain looks an awful lot like President Bush on the credit crisis: He doesn't seem to...

Official debt versus real obligations. The official federal debt is some $9.5 trillion, of which about $5.3 trillion is held by the investing public and $4.2 trillion is held in government accounts such as the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. But the official liabilities pale in comparison with the off-book entitlements — obligations to pay current and future Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Unfortunately, there is a gigantic gap between the value of future tax collections and the value of future entitlement payments. Economists call this the fiscal gap: the present value difference between the government's projected future...

It started out 16 months ago as a mortgage crisis, and then slowly evolved into a credit crisis. Now it's something entirely different and much more serious.

It is hard to remember tougher times than those of today in America. Our economic system, the model for the planet, is crumbling; our energy costs are out of control; we are engaged in two long and expensive wars; our deficits in spending are higher than ever in our history; our homes are more at risk than they have ever been. Are there any lessons to be learned from all of this, so we can avoid ever repeating all that has taken us here?

I just caught the middle part of a special on Fox that is quite damning (IMO) to democrats and Congress on this financial mess we find ourselves in. ACORN and Obama mentioned, and NOT in a flattering light. If you haven't seen it, or you only caught a part of it like me; you MUST catch it again tonight at 10pm ET on the Fox News Channel. We need to make sure this information spreads far and wide and fast. Hammer it home people, especially to any lefty (or independent/undecided) friends. This kind of information coming now, can bring down...

My cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions. The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance -- have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them). Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait...

Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government's $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come. 'There is a growing feeling that banks ... might instead decide to tough it out,' said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager. For the past two weeks all eyes in the market have been focused on US Congress and its attempts to pass Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bail-out package - a bill to allow the US government to...

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful. — C.S. Lewis At long last, the chickens have come home to roost. And what a mess they're making. From Wall Street to Main Street you can hear wailing and gnashing of teeth as investors—big and small—review the balances in their stock portfolios and 401(k) plans. Corporations are failing, the government is bailing, and white-knuckled investors are holding their breath wondering when and where the market...

(1) Crime that pays is crime that stays.There is reason to believe that Wall Street and those they represent are holding loans without collateral, multiple loans secured by the same properties, and other fraudulent instruments among the “troubled assets.” Based on the secret “Treasury Conference Call” with 800 Wall Street insiders, we know the deal proposed to be passed by Congress isn’t the real deal promised to Wall Street. (2) This smells like obstruction of justice.Bail-out without due diligence of so called “troubled assets” is a perfect way to hide documentation of financial crimes. It is also a perfect means...

Disgraced CEO Richard Fuld, who oversaw the demise of venerable Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc that helped tip the credit crunch into a full-blown crisis, will testify at a congressional hearing next week. Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has called Fuld and former chief executives of insurer American International Group Inc to appear at hearings into the financial excesses that led to the collapse of the companies. "Lax oversight and reckless investments on Wall Street are causing massive disruption throughout our economy," Waxman said in a statement on...

We have confronted the first financial panic of the “New Global Economy” – an economy spawned by the fall of the Berlin Wall; and the precedent we set will affect our prosperity, liberty and posterity for generations. Unconscionably we have rushed to misjudgment and approved a $700 billion Wall Street Bailout the American people know is intrinsically unfair to them. This truth is self-evident in how, initially, an exiting President and his Treasury Secretary incited a panic amongst our people and the world, all to compel a compliant Congress to deliver upon this demand: “Main Street must bail out Wall...

The financial-market implosion and the coming transformation of the securities industry pose a risk to the national economy. But they especially imperil New York State, which for decades has built its budgets on the expectation of raising ever-greater revenues from a Wall Street that now no longer exists. New York was once a great industrial state. But for the past quarter of a century, with occasional bear-market interruptions, the state's dependence on Wall Street has grown as manufacturing has shriveled. Last year, nearly 18% of private wages in New York State came from the securities industry. That was up from...

Congress approved a $700 billion bank bailout Friday, but stocks tumbled as investors worried that the plan wouldn't be enough to stem the credit crisis or keep the US economy from falling into a recession. The House approved the financial rescue plan by a vote of 263-171 and it was quickly signed into law by President Bush. The action ended two weeks of high-stakes haggling in Washington that had roiled global markets. Stocks, which rallied before passage of the bailout, immediately reversed course as investors focused on the economy and credit crisis. The market ended up with its worst week...

The Dow gives up 313-point advance after $700 billion bailout is passed on second try. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks erased most of the session's gains Friday afternoon as investors took a 'buy the rumor, sell the news' reaction to the House approval of a $700 billion bailout bill. Credit markets remained frozen, despite the vote, with two measures of bank jitters rising to record highs. Investors also looked to Wells Fargo's planned purchase of Wachovia and a dismal job market report.

MAIN POINTS: 1. Despite the passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), the recession is likely to deepen, with outright declines in real GDP in coming quarters. Our forecast downgrade reflects the recent sharp tightening of financial conditions and the severe deterioration in some of the most reliable indicators of economic activity, including the weekly jobless claims data and the ISM manufacturing report. 2. Our new forecasts include an increase in the unemployment rate to 8% by the end of 2009, up from a cyclical trough of 4½% in early 2007. Assuming a “sustainable” unemployment rate of 4½-5%, this...

Unofficial closing numbers: 10,326.34 -156.51 (-1.49%) Lets do some math: $800 Billion-the new cost of the bailout package as 100 billion in sweeteners was added. $300 Billion program announced today to redo peoples mortgages.$630 Billion the The Federal Reserve will pump into the global financial system $600 Billion spending bill that funds the government into March$180 Billion the Federal Reserve pumped into the system last week

Media bias? Nah. The Hartford Courant last week reported the results of the latest poll of Connecticut voters' opinions on Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd, and the presidential candidates. The article focused primarily on Sen. Lieberman, whom the Courant once worshiped, but now despises for failing to follow the Democrats into the Land of the Loopy Left. Sen. Dodd, meanwhile, continued to get the benefit of the Courant's lapdoggery. Sen. Lieberman's numbers were reported every which way, and the poll's director capped them off with his two cents: "He's really polling as a weak Republican."...

No sooner had the $805B bail-out bill passed the House than Pelosi went to the TV cameras and promised show trials under Henry Waxman to pin the blame for this mess (on Republicans). She then praised Barney Frank's courage and leadership in delivering the country from the evil of Republicans in general and Wall Street in particular. Denny Hoyer then spoke of how we must never let the greedy lenders destroy the economy and that he is going to make sure that never happens again. James Clyburn assured viewers that Congress will make sure that no one loses their home...

Let me see if I have this right. We the People express our overwhelming disdain for a government manufactured, taxpayer-funded bailout of semi-coerced greed merchants on Wall Street and the Senate’s answer is to leave the offending legislation intact and entice weak politicians into voting for the package by adding sweetheart tax legislation to it. Can this possibly – in the most incredible of circumstances – be correct? Just as I finished setting up my new television I found myself clearing away the debris and dust from a bazooka shot that destroyed it. You see, I felt the destruction needed...

Biden: "you've seen what's happened on Wall Street"> Biden: "letting Wall Street run wild" Palin: "there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street" Biden: "You had actually the belief that Wall Street could self-regulate itself" Biden: "Letting Wall Street run wild" Palin: "Stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street" Palin: "Corruption and the greed on Wall Street" Palin: "Get rid of the greed and corruption on Wall Street" Palin: "We have got to not allow the greed and corruption on Wall Street anymore"

Here is a novel idea coming to Southwestern Pennsylvania for Election Day: Sign up to become a “pollworker,” paid by a “non-partisan effort,” and then ensure that people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote actually will get to vote. This from “Pollworkers for Democracy,” which uses fear tactics based on the recent mortgage crisis as a hook to snag people living on the edge of financial problems: “Imagine being told you've lost the right to vote because the bank foreclosed on your home,” begins the e-mail. It goes on to say that if you lose your home and have to...

Short-selling on U.S. states can pay off By Mary Williams Walsh Friday, October 3, 2008 While regulators were sprinting to save the financial system last month, someone was making a lot of money — by betting against the State of New Jersey. It is not clear who. But trading records suggest that in the panicked days when exotic derivatives were bringing the American International Group to its knees, traders were using the same kinds of derivatives, called credit-default swaps, to profit from New Jersey's rising tide of red ink. Speculators have long been able to short-sell stocks, making money when...

DIVISION A--EMERGENCY ECONOMIC STABILIZATION SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS. (a) Short Title.--This division may be cited as the ``Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008''. (b) Table of Contents.--The table of contents for this division is as follows: Sec..1..Short title and table of contents. Sec..2..Purposes. Sec..3..Definitions. TITLE I--TROUBLED ASSETS RELIEF PROGRAM Sec..101..Purchases of troubled assets. Sec..102..Insurance of troubled assets. Sec..103..Considerations. Sec..104..Financial Stability Oversight Board. Sec..105..Reports. Sec..106..Rights; management; sale of troubled assets; revenues and sale proceeds. Sec..107..Contracting procedures. Sec..108..Conflicts of interest. Sec..109..Foreclosure mitigation efforts. Sec..110..Assistance to homeowners. Sec..111..Executive compensation and corporate governance. Sec..112..Coordination with foreign authorities and central banks....

DALLAS (Reuters) - Conservative U.S. Christians say the culture has gone to hell and it has taken the economy and Wall Street down with it. It is a view which outsiders may find puzzling but has wide resonance in the U.S. heartland: the notion that moral decay and a lost sense of responsibility has brought on the worst banking and credit crisis since the Great Depression. Such a view helps explain the unpopularity in conservative Christian circles -- which have a big influence on the Republican Party -- of a $700 billion bailout plan which the U.S. House of Representatives...

In the boom years the financial world, which we call Wall Street, reaped rewards to satisfy King Midas. In just one recent year, 2006, its firms paid out an astonishing $62 billion in bonuses (no, this is not a typo). The "masters of the universe" created not one bubble, but two: a housing bubble and then a credit bubble, and now that both have burst we face a growing danger of a global financial panic. Every day that passes without a remedy multiplies the risk of a complete freeze up of the financial and credit markets. This threatens a crash...

If the French are embracing your economic proposals – something must be wrong according to one overseas investor. That was what Hugh Hendry, the Scottish CIO of Eclectica Asset, told “Squawk Box Europe” viewers on CNBC Europe Oct. 2. Hendry was referring to a $400+ billion bailout proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Oct. 1 and comparing it the bailout bill passed in the U.S. Senate that included a $700 billion bailout package and an additional $150 billion in tax extenders.

  Assault on the mortgage lenders: in the name of racial justice, the Clintonites want the power to decide who gets a home of his own - efforts to impose regulations on banks to make loans even if applicants are not creditworthy Robert Stowe England QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous. Here,...

Markets flashed signs of panic Thursday as evidence of recession mounted and banks remained wary of lending to one another. Stocks and commodities slid, prices for U.S. Treasury bonds and other safe-haven investments rose sharply, and European currencies slumped amid worries that economic weakness there will deepen. In the U.S., new data showed a seven-year high in jobless claims and a plunge in factory orders, underscoring the woes in non-financial sectors of this country's economy that have gotten relatively little attention amid the recent debate over a rescue package for troubled Wall Street firms. Traders welcomed the passage of that...

Asian investors placed little faith and credit in the U.S. Senate's passage of a revised bailout package; stock indexes in Japan, South Korea and Australia deepened their morning descent into the red as Thursday wore on. Markets were moving on signs of a intensified global downturn rather than on U.S. bailout developments, some analysts said. Hong Kong managed, however, to turn around its early losses in the final hour of trading. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.9%, to 11,154.76 points, as manufacturers and financials slid. The broader Topix suffered an even steeper decline of 2.2%, to 1,076.97. Shares of Japanese automakers...

The Senate Finance Committee has published a summary of some of the additions to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. There are many provisions in the bill that will directly benefit millions of Americans -- what's called the "AMT patch," for instance, which will protect 20 million middle class Americans from seeing a tax increase in 2009. Or tax deductions for tuition, and for teacher expenses. Corporations will see extensions of popular tax cuts -- for research and development, or renewable energies. But there's also some other stuff. My colleague Z. Bryon Wolf points out that it bears mentioning that all...

As most of us know, we're not bailing out Wallstreet. We're bailing out the foreign Central Banks. Why everyone in high levels of Gov't is being untruthful about "the crisis" is beyond me. And the sad thing is that many in Gov't (junior Representatives) don't even know what's going on. But, you're about to. Here's my idea of what's REALLY going on with that "bailout": Foreign investors, particularly Government Central Banks, love to buy American debt (private and public), because in the past it's always been a good investment. The "Bad Paper" we keep hearing about was initially generated through...

Greek officials said the state would cover "all bank deposits, whatever the amount." The move follows the dramatic decision by Ireland this week to guarantee the deposits and debts of its six biggest lenders in the most sweeping bank bail-out since the credit crisis began. "The whole of Europe will have to do same thing, otherwise Europe will have a split banking system," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. British banks are already facing a haemorrhage of deposits to Irish banks that now enjoy the AAA sovereign rating of the Irish state. Greece has so far escaped attention...

Bill Manville says he is proud of his representative, freshman Democrat Nancy Boyda of Kansas, for helping vote down the $700 billion financial-rescue bill Monday. But the Winchester farmer and staunch Republican quickly adds that doesn't mean he will necessarily vote next month for Rep. Boyda -- a top target of Republican strategists. The size and timing of the rescue plan, a month before Election Day -- and with early balloting already under way in parts of the country -- made it the most consequential vote many House members say they have ever taken. The short-term economic consequences were quickly...

We expect it from the likes of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, but when we hear conservatives from George Bush to David Brooks speak as if it’s a scientific fact that the only solution to the mortgage/liquidity mess is to put the geniuses of the federal government in charge of $700 billion of the people’s money, we immediately detect a powerful stink in the air. Yes, something smells rotten when a gang of politicians, bureaucrats, and CEO’s tell us they are so certain about their solution to a problem (which their rapacity created) that there is no need to consider...

Not that long ago, a dollar was worth a half-gallon of gasoline. Just a few days ago, a dollar was worth a little less than one-quarter-gallon of gasoline. When the value of the dollar is expressed this way, the question is did the gasoline become more expensive or did the dollar become worth less? The dollar is a commodity that is bought and sold, borrowed and loaned and not exempt from economic laws. When the government tampers with the value of the money supply and the value of gasoline, we end up with high energy costs that send a shock...

We voiced opposition to this bailout so what does the Senate do? It adds more spending to it! Government is not the solution, it's the problem.Anyway, Medicare and Social Security obligations dwarf the current scheme being cooked up by our Feral Government. The First rule of holes is to stop digging, but the candyman politicians don't want to hear that. Little Jimmy Bankster tried to make gold out of lead and failed, soiling himself in the process, so Uncle Sucker comes along, wipes away his tears and stuffs his pockets full of taxpayer money.Why didn't our government at least try...

Mark Levin spoke with Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ) last night about the bailout bill (passed by the Senate last night, 74-25). While Garrett voted against the House version Monday, he says that fear is winning out over freedom: Senate Conservatives Fund: Bailouts are bankrupting our countryIf the bill that passed in the Senate last night is signed into law, Congress will have added $1.4 trillion dollars in bailouts to federal spending this year alone. On top of that, the bill is packed with pork. Here is the breakdown of that money, what is already law, plus what is in the...

Let’s boil this ‘new and improved’ bailout bill that just passed the Senate down to its bare bones. Then, if you’re moved to do so, it might just be time to pick up the phone and call your congressman, urging him to really ‘stand up for the American taxpayer’ (not to mention do what is right). Admittedly, the do what is right aspect of this whole thing would represent a complete aberration where any decision-making in Washington is concerned, but you may just sleep better tonight, having at least engaged in a personal effort to revive that archaic concept....

Yesterday I wrote about the lack of sound fiscal judgement exercised by extending the insurance limits on FDIC deposits within the bailout bill. The move which is aimed at nothing more than restoring consumer confidence in banks puts the entire Federal Deposit Insurance program at risk. After the failures of Indymac, WaMu, and Wachovia and failures of dozens of other banks, FDIC was forced to negotiate buyouts of these corporations from larger financials because FDIC did not have sufficient assets within their own insurance fund. Yesterday, I pointed out that just one national failure or large regional bank failure could...