Posted on 09/23/2008 8:49:22 AM PDT by johncocktoasten
Senators Isakson/Chambliss,
I am writing to express my hope that you will oppose ANY federal bailout of wall street, including government purchase of private mortgage loans and asset backed securities.
The implementation of this plan would result in the immediate insolvency of numerous banks and financial institutions across the country as the marking to market of these assets would create a massive hole in the capital base of these banks.
Under the alternative of not bailing out these institutions, many will still fold. However, allowing them to fold on their own will allow PRIVATE industry to come in and buy the liquidated assets at a real market price. Additionally, FDIC will be able to re-work loans for borrowers that these banks have failed to resolve.
Bolstering the FDIC insurance fund, as well as backing up the money market funds is the way to handle this problem. As far as the derivatives investors, they are responsible for knowing the risks of trading in illiquid securities with no actual commodity or instrument supporting them. It just like an option trade, the option written is only as good as the entity that writes the option.
I am in the mortgage industry, and can report to you that home prices are beginning to stabilize. This bailout will jeopardize the beginning of this recovery as moral hazard, with forced writedowns on mortgages and bankruptcy judges re writing loans, will erode any financial incentive for private industry to lend where the government will not.
If the credit default swaps market and the commodity market are properly regulated, and participants in those markets are required to have a stake in those markets, there would be a stabilizing effect. This stability would come thru in food and energy prices and consumers could begin to re-align their budgets to reflect the new economic reality.
YES- Bolster FDIC Insurance Fund YES- Bolster Money Market Funds YES- Require commodity and derivative market participants to have open interests in those markets
NO- Federal Purchase of Bad Assets NO- Federal Ownership stakes in Corporations NO- Allowing Judges to Rewrite Private Contracts (mortgages) NO- Do Not Hand Over this kind of power to the next chief executive of the United States
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
He can do whatever the hell he wants for two years, and those actions can have long-term effects WAY BEYOND those two years.
Yep, Karl Denninger videos have been around the web several times, as I said, rant, not solution..
If you want to quibble over definitions:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/bill.html
Bill: “draft of a proposed statute”
The real “bill” for taxpayers follows enactment of the statute.
I’ve seen it called a plan, proposal, bill, initiative and just a bailout. I’ve also seen it called The Paulson Project.
We all know what everyone is talking about. Why play the semantics game?
No, he can do anything he wants with the specific mortgages he has purchased for the length of those mortgages.
Do you understand what "pursuant to the authority of this Act" means?
This statement is 100% WRONG. Anyone who believes that hasn't been paying any attention to what the government is saying.
The plan being pushed by President Bush and Wall Street and now being discussed by congress is to purchase low rated securities from lenders and investments firms.
These may be packages of thousands of mortgages but will also be derivitives and other instruments based on motgages and other loans.
The money will go to the people who made bad investments - not to individual borrowers or depositors.
Taxpayers will be purchasing the bad loans that investors believe will not be profitable (ones that were, or will be foreclosed or not paid back).
Under discussion is a plan to extend the buyout to almost all bad investments held by investment banks and other lenders. Credit cards, consumer loans, car loans - you name it - they want to throw everything in the deal and scam as much taxpayer money as possible before people wise up to the scam.
In plain english it means that the bailout will just use taxpayer money to pick up all the bad credit and loans so the people who made them won't lose money.
They are also planning on buying the same bad loans and investments from foreign banks and companies doing bussiness in the USA. So we will also see hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars going to bail out foreign banks and investment firms that made foolish investments.
One of the issues delaying the plan is that no one really knows what these securities are worth - some are worth zero - others may have some value in the future.
The government officials pushing the plan and the people holding the bad paper want the purchase price to be set as near to the face value as possible.
A few cooler heads in congress are trying to object to this - they want the paper to be valued down around what it would be worth to a potential buyer on the open market, and that wouldn't be much. bad debt like this is commonly sold off for a few pennies on the dollar, if you can even find a buyer.
The whole thing is a giant scam to use trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail out wealthy friends and cronies of politicians and bureaucrats.
If it wasn't a scam the government would stay out of it or, at the most, offer bridge loans to get investors through this period until they could pay the taxpayer back at some future date - as was done with Chrysler back in 1980.
But these people do not want a loan - they want to just dump their bad loans on taxpayers. The details are more complex and worse than my brief description here.
And since the people pushing the plan are trying to expand the type and amount of debt they will cover, the final cost to taxpayers will probably be several trillion dollars.
Remember this - the people out of government pushing the plan are those who created the mess to begin with. And the people in government pushing the plan are the ones who get billions in political contruibutions from the group that will get the bailout money. Everyone makes out except the lowly taxpayer.
If you want to quibble over definitions:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/bill.html
Bill: “draft of a proposed statute”
The real “bill” for taxpayers follows enactment of the statute.
Caps intentional, THIS MANUFACTURED PANIC IS BEING USED TO SEIZE OUR FREEDOMS IN THE NAME OF FINANCIAL SECURITY.
“KILL THE BAILOUT. It is a big lie. The Dems want Socialism.”
Why are you complaining that the Dems want Socialism when it is the Republican administration’s proposal to rescue mostly Republican big money boys? Seriously puzzled.
[double post, sorry; FR’s slow today]
Colloquially, it can even mean simply the legislation that is actually presented to the Congress for a vote.
It does not mean preliminary drafts of possible legislation that have not even been formally submitted to a committee.
A draft is not a bill.
Speaking about this draft as if it is the final document, as if it is only waiting to be voted on, is completely disingenuous.
KILL THE BULLSHEET BAILOUT
In ... 2000-2002 we had a 36 percent drop in the DOW
now 2007-2008 we have..21 percent drop in the DOW
But since its an election year, and since the democrats control congress, they want to create a crisis. Its bull as in BULLSHEET.
call talkradio all day long. Someone has to take the lead and stop it dead in its tracks.
Do you understand how BROAD that authority is?
You know, that "Plan" that makes him the King?
(1) Any legislation that is passed will be passed with the vote of the Democrat majority. The administration is far from being the only entity that has proposed such a bailout. Calls for this have come from both sides of the aisle.
(2) The primary beneficiaries of this bill will be (a) people who took on more mortgage than they could afford and (b) people who have their savings deposited in banks that gave mortgages to the people in group (a).
(3) The "big money boys" have now pretty much lost their fortunes and their jobs - including thousands of "big money boys" who had nothing to do with mortgage lending and plenty of people who are not as "big money" as some trolls imagine.
(4) Most prominent Wall Street executives are Democrats, not Republicans. Republicans tend to be CEOs "old economy" firms like Halliburton and not financial firms like Lehman.
I am not the interlocutor in this conversation who is unclear on the scope of government authority.
You seem to have zero problem with the enormous breadth of authority enjoyed by Michael Astrue, but you are rendered incontinent with fear by the authority of an as-yet-unnamed bureaucrat who will have power of only a tiny fraction of the vast scope of Astrue's.
ACCOUNTABILITY=Is the last thing the democrats want.
A marriage proposal? It's the proposed bill language.
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