Posted on 09/19/2008 5:52:08 PM PDT by politicket
When government officials surveyed the flailing American financial system this week, they didn't see only a collapsed investment bank or the surrender of a giant insurance firm. They saw the circulatory system of the U.S. economy -- credit markets -- starting to fail.
Huddled in his office Wednesday with top advisers, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson watched his financial-data terminal with alarm as one market after another began go haywire. Investors were fleeing money-market mutual funds, long considered ultra-safe. The market froze for the short-term loans that banks rely on to fund their day-to-day business. Without such mechanisms, the economy would grind to a halt. Companies would be unable to fund their daily operations. Soon, consumers would panic.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The best place to be is out of debt and with a plan to sustain yourself and your family should things get really ugly. Talk with neighbors, or church members, about how assistance to each other can be structured.
If it's not needed - great. If it is needed then you will be one of the few that have planned wisely.
True, buying a $100,000.00 house for $400,000.00 is not smart.
Option B would have given us President Hussein a Congress with a 2/3 Dem Majority to remake America in ways you do not want to imagine.
This story is amazing.
We almost saw the downturn move from Wall Street to your local bank this week...our leaders have moved fast and averted it for now.
I hope to God Congress passes this law...and quickly.
I hope they don't. It's not a solution and will only prolong what's coming and make it worse for all concerned.
Difference of opinion...
While that is possible, I think that the opposite would have been just as likely - a desire to see a President in office that had experience (albeit lots of bad ideas) versus a guy like Obambi who is just plain studid (not trying to be mean to the guy - just stating obvious fact).
One tries to stand back, not get upset, and take the long view, but it is really hard to avoid getting really angry at the crooks, incompetents, idiots and scoundrels. Say, has anyone heard from Greenspan in the last 24hrs.
Why do I suspect that Karl Marx is smiling in his grave?
Actually, it sounds like he is taking option C: take all the bad paper off of the scoundrels who got us into this mess so that they are free to do it again.
Where do you keep the cash? In the bank? Floating in the market?
Lots of the crooks are lying low. For good reason.
Because this is how he said capitalists behave - steal from the working class to give to the bourgeoisie. What is happening is not socialism. It is state sponsored corporatism a la 3rd world dictatorships.
They need to be lain low.
However, the alternative this week was Wall Street firms crashing, then big banks going down, then runs on your local bank.
And following would be huge unemployment.
The paradox and wonderful thing is, even the announcement of the plan has gotten money moving again...thank God. They have bought some time and given our financial system hope. But if we near the same crisis the plan must be implemented.
In a mixture of banks and other holding facilities so I will not lose it all if one goes belly up. It is all very liquid. I refrained from putting 15% of my corporate income into my SEP (Self-employment pension plan) this year due to wanting to stay "quicker on my feet" and not have that money so illiquid.
They have bought some time = Yes
and given our financial system hope. = No
BTW, I am glad to see that the efforts of a few of us to push this word into the lexicon is gaining momentum. Socialism is making other people do things "for their own good," sort of smug self-satisfied belief that you know better than other people. That is not what this is about. This is about taking OPM and stuffing it in your own pocket.
“Reduce exposure to equities in favor of what? I’m out of equities, but am unsure where to turn. Gold? So far, that little number has not done me much good.”
You can’t eat gold. Better to buy in to lead, smokless power, and guns. Canned foods and dry goods. These things will increase a 100 fold in the coming years.
The fact that the announcement of the plan was the only thing that saved the DOW from a huge crash last Wednesday proves you are wrong.
A large part of the scare was that local banks experienced a run on CD's and so-called safe investments. Paulson's announcement of the plan reversed it. Thank God.
There were obviously a lot of mistakes made on the way to Wednesday.
But there is no way that allowing the entire financial system to collapse could ever be considered a solution.
It wasn’t hard to STOP that disaster. Even if in a month they say “we worked really hard, but we couldn’t put together the RTC to get through congress”, we might be beyond the crisis, because in the interim people might have been scared enough to start straightening things out.
Sometimes you need a time out.
Of course, I fully expect they’ll pass something. And we won’t like it. But it might work anyway.
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