Posted on 03/17/2009 2:47:28 PM PDT by ari-freedom
RUSH: Here's Brad in Severn, Maryland. Great to have you. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I'm glad you moved me ahead of Carol.
RUSH: She asked for it. She asked for it.
CALLER: She did indeed.
RUSH: There you have it. Okay.
CALLER: I was just calling about this issue with the execs at AIG, and I think this is another one of the numerous plays that the Obama administration is making, because it really is absolutely pointless. They could solve a lot of their problems with a few accounting moves. One of them is getting off of the mark-to-market accounting and going to a five-year average.
RUSH: Right. Now, while I was on the charity golf circuit last week didn't they float the idea, didn't Obama float the idea that they might someday relax mark-to-market, someday lower the corporate income tax?
CALLER: Yeah. I mean, but, once again, it's a talking point that he was going to the audience that he was working with at the time. He's not going to do that. Remember, Rahm Emanuel said we need a crisis. If they do that, it will solve the crisis.
RUSH: But he said it because he wanted a market up-tick because his approval numbers are heading down, and he wanted the market to be up so he can say his stimulus plan is working.
(Excerpt) Read more at rushlimbaugh.com ...
“We'll have to call you back tomorrow.” She asked for it. I'll bet she will not be on the radio tomorrow as she is ‘too busy.’
Go Rush!
I loved the way Rush handled that ditzy, big lib bonehead, “Carol.” She was a plant sent by the Obamacorns to frustrate Rush. Very condescending also. Anyway, Rush fixed her wagon! Sit her ass in the corner and tell her to shut up. Way to go Rush!
Rush sat her in the corner with style!
Keep in mind when Mark-to-Market was implemented in Nov 2007 when the Dow was @ 14,000. It's been all down hill since, and the bursting housing bubble was the accelerent.
MTM is an excellent way of valuing freely-traded assets. Contrarily, it is an absolutely terrible way of valuing assets that trade once a year, or once every 5 or 10 years (commercial real estate, for example). Far more accurate and appropriate marks would be had by using 2- or 3-year rolling averages...but that's not important, because the Regress isn't about doing the right thing or doing things right, it's about power. No more, no less.
I’m a fairly bright guy. I understand and can explain many things in detail, including some financial theories like QE. But there are two things I just can’t grasp no matter how hard I try...Quantum Physics and mark-to-market with derivatives.
Wait, what happened? I was at work and couldn’t listen. What happened with this lib Carol? And what did Rush do? I love it when he mops the floor with libs.
If I understand the caller, it basicaly puts one under market manipulation. If, say, Soros or a complicit government, wanted to make your house worthless opportunity, they’d mark it to market and increase thus its price volatility.
This allows options on your house to bring in profit (volatility means high cost of derivatives and “price insurance” and other hedging products built around your house).
It’s a denunciative system which inherently makes your assets unnaturaly liable and makes them look “dangerous” while making risky options look secure and needed.
Thus if tomorrow government mismanagement leads to inflation, they could not pay workers but in bartered goods. Where are they going to get those goods since the paper they pay their workers with becomes worthless? One way is nationalization, another one is mark to market and tying devaluation of the money to the value of assets, seizing those as tax you owe them.
... and this would also create the housing bubble, ie. folkes “surfing” house price speculations, providing wrong incentives to put solid assets into worthless paper.
Carol called in and more or less accused Rush of not taking liberal callers. He told her that he puts liberals at the front of the line, and then after a little bickering, asked her if it would make her feel better to wait her turn on hold. She said yes.
He even asked her after a commercial break if she was still waiting on hold, and then took another call.
By the time he took his last couple of calls, he was out of time, announced that he couldn't get back to Carol, and the show ended.
It was a scream.
And I think she called Hannity later on. Last caller of the day. She sounded just like Carol, said the same things. Including that she listened to Sean every day, just like she said to Rush. (How can anyone listen to any show every day?) Business-woman, liberal, etc. Hannity said “he liked her”, she sounded nice, etc. Gave her a lot of time...and then gave her 2 dinners to Ruths Chris!
It was just by chance I got to hear both shows, both callers.
Thanks much. I think I need to spend some time trying to understand derivatives, especially those whose underlying asset is an intangible like an index or interest rates. Should give me something to do for a few months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market
Interest rate derivatives are very complex.
On another note, related to the complicated weather derivatives because their products (crops) are sensitive to it (and it relates to the carbon credit schemes), is when Hurricane Katrina’s relative soft blow lead to such political devaluation and panic. The incompetence of Governor Blanco who did not want to credit good rescuers of the right, combined with Bush’s non-response to the politics, lead to a sort of “mark to market” situation which paralyzed everything and made things worse.
To this day the Constitutional reaction to disaster are not studied as a matter of national survival of checks and balances, but instead everyone guesses or does not want to think about it. Stampedes and not fires in theaters are what cause death.
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