I don’t understand this argument....they are saying that its more beneficial to artifically hold up the market rather than to let it naturally contract, right? So, can someone please explain how manipulating the natural course of things is going help us? If we create jobs and loans that shouldn’t be there, how far are we setting ourselves up to fall then?
So then why not send the BAILOUT directly to Main St.? It’s all connected right?
>>“So no car loans, house loans, business loans and the like.”
We’ll see. That sounds like extortion to me.
Maybe credit should be returned to local communities and the banks that represent them - instead of credit being managed by criminal extortionists who are trying to run a protection racket by holding a match to the economy they soaked with their CDO gasoline.
So we respond to this extortion by establishing the precedent that whenever Wall Street gets in trouble, it can hit up the taxpayer for help. Yeah, that’s going to provide an incentive to the financial services industry to make prudent business and investing decisions.
This matter only became a national crisis of the first order when the Treasury Secretary’s old employer faced a significant loss.
This is a good thing.
I was talking with an analyst at one of the large banks who kept insisting the bailout is necessary. When I asked for a breakdown of toxic assets into those backed by assets (i.e. real mortgages), and those related to CDs and CDOs, his response was... well you did your homework. The response floored me. It was so obvious that they believe main street has no clue whatsoever.
i think we rubes get that - and we are saying we ain't bailing out either - next threat please
Bull.
Banks loan money.
That is what they do.
As long as there are banks, there will be loans. The interest rates may go up to cover bad debts and other risks, but if you want a new car you will be able to get a loan (provided you can prove you have the ability to make the payments).
This is Richard Mellon King or whatever his name trying to protect his own wealth.
Sorry Rich, but I don’t see my local business owners running around in lotuses buying $5,000 bottles of champagne at 25 years old on my main street. They all work too damned hard for their money for that crap.
I’ve spent time in Manhattan and the financial district, please to not insult my intelligence by telling me Wall Street is Main Street. I don’t see the farmers actually growing the crops your commodity brokers make millions off of driving their Lamborghinis to church on Sunday, or to the local watering hole after hard days work, or up to the weekend home in the Hamptons. You want to know where they excesses and corruption in the system is, it AIN’T main street.
That may be. But every Freeper, regardless of good intentions, who has been posting to the effect that "there will be BLOOD in the streets Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday!!" has not only been acting in a way that would encourage panic, but also ,by those repeated wrong predictions, helping to foster the equally wrong belief that everything is perfectly OK with the financial system.
Whose Main Street are they talking about?
Ths morning,I went to my local bank to renew or remove a CD.The manager gave me the same rate that another local bank was offering.
I asked her if they were involved in the sub-prime mess and she said “no way,we are a community bank”.
I asked if I could get a mortgage or car loan,and she said”certainly” if you qualified,and it appears that you do
The only time that I have ever agreed with Dennis Kocinich is the other day when he said that he was elected to Congress not the Board at Goldman-Sachs.
Government out of private finance, no matter the cost.
Better to take the hit now rather than true economic collapse later.
To those with 401K or other investments... I can only sympathize with you only so far...
Your money investment = Your responsibility
I’m a dumba$$ when it comes to this sort of stuff, but then again, I never invested a penny, in anything, so I’m allowed to be ignorant of nearly all things financial.
If some person that you mayhaps never met face to face with does things with your money as far as investments and funds, well I can only say sorry if you take a ‘hit’ due to this mess. Don’t get me wrong, I do not scoff, laugh, or not empathize with your loss.
But I pay taxes, and I’ll just go out on a limb and say everbody that can afford to invest in anything also pays taxes.
Now here’s the real gist, either cover the losses at taxpayers expense now and have to bail em out again in the future (most expexted), or take the hit now.
During Jimma Cattas catastrophy, the words of doom were written illegibly in crayola by liberal idiots, then during The Clintonian debacle, they were severly enforced by idiots with power, with no concern of the future consequences. That these idiots did not, and would never think of folks like us, should not have been a surprise.
Take the hit now or lose your freedom.
“In the sense that if the credit market dries up on Wall Street, capital will be unavailable on Main Street,” said University of Arizona political science professor Robert Maranto. “So no car loans, house loans, business loans and the like.”
The “political science” professor is NOT an economist and Wall Street is not main street.
Notice who is being “bailed out” for the most part - “Wall Street” investment “banks” - not Citibank (just bought Wachovia), not Chase (just took over WaMu), not Bankamerica. Notice also that the last remaining “investment banks” - Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan will become full fledged commercial banks, as well.
It is revenue on “Wall Street” not revenue on main street that is drying up, or in a better sense, the ability for “Wall Street” investment banks to raise revenue (among all industries their stocks are the most in the tank).
Commercial banks have the millions of depositors and credit card customers that, by the nature of the normal economic activity, generate new revenue.
It is the credit market “to” Wall Street that is becoming illiquid, but outside “Wall Street” investment banks, in the commercial/residential banks and the rest of the businesses in main street (companies that actually produce something), revenue continues, and, if everyone does not get too excited, so will “credit” (based on that revenue).
It amazes me that the idea is accepted so easily that with Merrill et al gone companies cannot get their equities traded on stock exchanges. What, you think companies themselves cannot buy their own seat at an exchange and hire brokers at Schwab or E-Trade? They have to have a Merrill do it for them? Or, that they cannot themselves go to the private capital markets and provide warrants directly to investors instead of paying Goldman millions to borrow the money for them? The money, the capital is out there; it’s just not sitting so much in the companies that squandered it.
I (personally) know about a few billion in a few current deals that have no banks of any kind involved and I am not even in the business and my friends are small fries in it.