Posted on 05/11/2011 11:33:33 AM PDT by Captain Kirk
Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It’s trying to solve a problem.
The unprecedented financial crisis has caused the Treasury of the United States to take unprecedented measures to help solve the problem of frozen credit and cash flow for U.S. businesses.
Most of us had dreams of what we wanted to be when we grew up as children. Some of us wanted to grow up and become a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a teacher, an actor, an engineer, a writer, a dancer, a chef or any number of other professions.
But some of us wanted to own a bank because that’s where the money is!
Wake up people! Owning a part of the major banks in America is not a bad thing. We could make a profit while solving a problem.
But the mainstream media and the free market purists want you to believe that this is the end of capitalism as we know it. It is not for several reasons that they have conveniently not explained. (emphasis mine).
(Excerpt) Read more at 004eeb5.netsolhost.com ...
Taxpayers to idiot author of this piece... please take a basic class on economics and try again. In the mean time, STFU.
If not for this nonsense, Herman Cain would be an excellent Republican Party nominee in 2012.
I wouldn’t call him an idiot. I think, instead, that he’s shilling for the Fed-Wall Street-TBTF Banking establishment.
I don’t think this will earn brownie points at FR but this does raise Herman Cain’s stock in my eyes.
As I say rather predictably, the failure to appraise and appreciate the genius of George Bush is a fundamental impediment to conservative and Republican success.
I would go somewhat further than Cain in characterizing this success. The TARP bailout is a model for getting out of the present fiscal mess.
Why should not the vast majority of government handouts not be paid back with interest?
That is the direct reality of TARP. The rapid turn around of funds has been startling to almost all experts.
People need to clue in that this is a fairly important possible candidate for President and try to think this through more dispassionately.
Again this will likely fall on deaf ears for some.
In my view, Herman Cain represents a seasoned and capable follow up to Alan Keyes. It seems that he did well in the first Republican debate. I hope he gets a fair hearing at FR.
True, everyone makes mistakes... but writing a piece that claims that government owning stock in banks is a good thing... eeeek.
Banks have evolved from financial service institutions to consumer/taxpayer ripoff and gouging enterprises. Rather than make a profit for providing valuable service, they now strive to make profits by finding new ways to rape their customers. I’d be ashamed to invest or work in one.
I just checked my bank stocks. Is he an idiot or what.
I want to change the word idiot. That’s how I feel for waiting too late to get out.
He’s just plain stupid.
Some bank robber answered when he was asked about robbing banks -- "That is where the money is."
politicians are the bank robbers now --- and the TAXPAYERS are the banks.
——————The TARP bailout is a model for getting out of the present fiscal mess.
Why should not the vast majority of government handouts not be paid back with interest?——————
Wha? The only way that this can be viewed as ‘the model’ is if your starting point is TARP. But TARP isn’t the starting point.
The starting point isn’t even the housing bust.
The starting point is big government policy such as but not limitted to CRA, HUD regulations, Federal reserve easy money policy, ACORN brown beating, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Barney Frank.............
So big government causes a mortgage crisis, and big government TARP is the solution to the big government caused crisis.........
And that’s the model?
Seems that the model is the constitution. The crisis wouldn’t have happened in a small government environment.
As I read the piece, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Herman Cain doesn’t understand progressivism. This one paragraph was a sore thumb:
=======The free market purists’ objection to this is that it smacks at government control of the banking industry, which is called nationalization. They are correct. It smacks, but it is not nationalization because that would require the government to own at least 51 percent of the entity for an indefinite period of time.===========
Most of us around here realize that the federal government’s power to control is in the strings. Regulations, subsidies, and so forth.
It doesn’t matter if we’re only talking about 1% much less 51%, the federal government and progressives are going to exert some controls.
They’re control freaks. I just hope everybody realizes that this piece was written in 2008. A lot of things have changed since then.
Before you call your broker about bank stocks, you can research the health of any bank in the USA at:
http://banktracker.msnbc.msn.com/banks/
Banktracker will give you a snapshot of a bank. Pay special attention to the Amount of “Capital plus Reserves” versus “Total Troubled Assets”. Lately the FDIC has not been closing very many banks unless their Troubled Assets are almost 3 times the amount of capital.
This next one is the actual FDIC site where you can review the detailed “Call Report” submitted every 90 days by each bank in the US.
I agree with you. The government caused the crisis. A government fix should require payback though.
Well, if we can’t stop big government progressivism, then I guess payback is all that’s left.
I’ll have to agree with you.
I think both approaches are legit. I think conservatives should “compromise” with spending by saying it all has to be paid back with interest. I think that would be hard to argue.
Its not the first time it has been done. The S&L crisis in the late 80s was handled the same way. The mess was cleaned up and the money was paid back with interest. The cost was about $200 billion initially.
Cuts can also work and did work when the Republicans in Congress axed the budget in the 1990s
Of course, you’re right. After all centralization of credit in the hands of the state is the 5th plank of the Communist Manifesto.
It’s a shame that Cain is promoting this BS. On everything else he’s pretty solid.
A PMS-NBC web site? Sounds reliable to me... NOT!
-——————I think conservatives should “compromise” with spending by saying it all has to be paid back with interest.——————
The real problem is that we’ve compromised on big government.
Which is a key to noticing who’s really a conservative, and who isn’t. Government buys votes by hooking us all into the heroin of someone else’s money.
I know what I’ve given up personally - because I’m serious about reducing government so that our kids will know the freedom that Tocqueville wrote about.
Some of us are happy to see government shrunk - provided “you don’t take away MY heroin - take that guy’s, over there. Don’t take mine”.
To me, it all goes hand in hand.
Sadly a lot of "conservatives" were promoting the de facto bank nationalization policies of late 2008. I hope that in the wake of the failures of these policies, that many have learned that government bailouts are never the answer.
Looking at this thread and others on FR it is the self defeatism of conservatism that does the most damage in my estimation.
Beginning in 2007, the Congress shifted decisively toward the Democrats. The Democrats implemented the Housing crisis via Barney Frank and the gang. Frankly— no pun intended— instituting a larger economic crisis to pin on the Bush administration so as to make the election about the economy was not beyond their wishes or power.
The Congress began in 2009 to shift back toward the Republicans. It is imperative that the Senate shift back toward republicans in 2012. In the 1990s, a Republican Congress was able to move the budget back to a balanced position. Defeatists will point out that this does not solve the larger debt.
An inability to identify and point specifically to successful policies under the guise of being purists is bad politics, bad principals, and bad thinking. Republicans cut welfare in the 1990s and precipated the largest drop in poverty in US history. That did more than save money in the budget. It improved the lives of millions of people by taking them off welfare and compelling them back to work.
I personally still believe the democrats incited the banking crisis in order to get Bush. I think conservatives to this day still play along. The banking crisis associated with the mortgage industry could have done much more damage. Bush head faked with TARP saying he would spend as much as 800 billion. He spent only 350 and compelled the legislation to have payback mechanisms with interest. That prevented the Democrats from creating a long term economic catastrophe wherein they would have “not let a crisis go to waste.” It would have been New Deal 2.
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.