Posted on 11/29/2011 10:13:07 AM PST by Hojczyk
The long slog continues. The feature of the post-crisis economy has been a two-speed recovery. As a group, companies have done extremely well. Corporate profits and cash holdings are at record highs. The stock market has bounced back smartly since the lows of March 2009. But consumers haven't done quite as well.
For consumers, it takes a lot longer to restructure debt. Families can't fire their kids, or walk away from financial commitments so easily. For most families, the biggest fixed cost is generally housing. And while it's possible to cut housing costs by defaulting, or refinancing, or downsizing, people still have to live somewhere. And in contrast to the system for processing corporate failure, the systems for processing foreclosure and personal bankruptcy move much more slowly. Personal debt restructuring is a retail business — done in increments of a few thousand, or tens of thousands of dollars.
And so the slow-motion process continues. Instead of dramatic, rapid improvement in household balance sheets, we get slow, barely detectable ones. The numbers show a high level of stress, a fragile recovery, and plenty of pain to come for borrowers and lenders. But they also show that, over time, the excesses that built up in the last decade are slowly being worked out.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
this makes feelings of resentment against the banks highly personal, and a potential political firebomb if the right spark were to ignite
Do you resent your bank? Why?
Notice the article didn’t mention how the government has screwed up the foreclosure process and delayed (and made worse) many a financial situation. Housing prices continue to tumble in most areas.
The author is drawing the wrong conclusion. Cash holdings are at record high not because companies are doing well but because they are scared to spend or invest the money. They haven't a clue what zero will change next. As for the profits; if you aren't spending or investing your excess cash then you look better on a balance sheet and as a percentage your profits appear to go up.
I don't resent all banks, just the ones that were involved in the 7.7 TRILLION DOLLAR scam that went on from 2007 to 2009 that we and our offspring will be paying back for generations while they keep increasing their salaries and claiming they don't need regulation.
What they need is to dissolve.
p.s. you can't claim you pay me back when you borrow from me the monies to pay me back with
As people struggle to reduce their personal debt, their share of the national debt being run through the roof by their elected officials will drown them
Can you be more specific about the "scam"?
that we and our offspring will be paying back for generations
What will you be paying back?
p.s. you can't claim you pay me back when you borrow from me the monies to pay me back with
Specifics?
I’m just sayin’. People react emotionally and not necessarily logically. Especially when stories of some new behind-the-scenes bailout keep popping up.
You must have missed the part of Rush yesterday when he revealed that the “big” banks didn’t need the bailout, but were forced to take TARP money so that the small banks that needed it wouldn’t be “stigmatized”. The big banks paid back what they were forced to take, with interest.
So, yeah, be angry about the bailout, but make sure your anger is directed correctly.
I know what you mean. People still complain about the big banks and TARP, even though the bank portion of TARP was repaid at a profit to the Treasury.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/11/28/we-didnt-know-about-the-feds-7-7-trillion/
Read it and explain exactly where they're going to get it.
It will be from you and me
They are the biggest crooks in history
Now they're down grading them again. Back to the trough On the p.s. specifics
http://consumerist.com/2009/12/why-bank-of-americas-tarp-payback-is-bad-news.html
this is just one of many examples but explains it pretty well
Where who is going to get what, exactly?
If you're talking about the banks and TARP, they repaid.
If you're talking about the banks and the Fed, they repaid.
What Bank of America has done is simply replace one form of taxpayer sponsored capital (TARP) with equity and another form of taxpayer sponsored capital—loans from the Fed.
Fed loans are not "taxpayer sponsored". The only taxpayer involvement is the interest paid by B of A is eventually returned to the Treasury.
On the day your article was written, Fed Discount Window Loans totaled $19.35 billion, not quite enough to cover B of A's $45 billion repayment.
The number steadily declined after that date and never jumped to reflect this guys B of A theory.
His explanation was wrong. Big time.
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.