Posted on 03/10/2009 6:13:40 AM PDT by Fred
I think the term is mark-to-market.
Not going to happen. These are the folks who have lined the pockets of the Obamination and they are being served. And Wall Street can just continue its ride to the bottom of the porcelain bowl to make room for the socialist agenda.
We will pay a heavy price for our government's refusal to do the right thing.
Market-to-market has something to do with a nursery rhyme.
*sigh*
Journalists who can actually READ are too much to ask for I suppose.
If allowing banks to misrepresent the value of their assets is the answer, someone’s asking the wrong question.
Hey Steve, go all the way, just make audits and annual reports optional too.
The same lie every time. No, it's the equivalent of saying, "Get rid of that Gremlin that's been on blocks in the back yard for twenty years."
Measured words - what do you think should be done, Wallace T.
Great, then they can give me a mortgage on my house that’s 80% LTV on what the house would have been worth 2.5 years ago. How’s that sound?
This has been discussed about half a dozen times in prior threads, altho it’s likely to have just appeared in the CC Times today/recently. [That’s not meant to be an overt or covert “dupe thread” admonition!]
I’m totally against this, as I’ve said several times before. Under some circumstances, I could see it. But the banks have used up all their “gimmes” and then some. And then some more. The first-world world financial system has been permitted to inflict its’ many abuses upon the real-world economy for years. With their excesses, they’ve not only crapped in their own pants, but they have stunk up the joint everywhere and with every thing they’ve touched. For them, interest rates have been dropped effectively to zero, killing savers and forcing the prudent to have to bail out the squanderers in nation after nation. Yet credit rates have eased only slightly. Legitimate businesses cannot get credit, yet this cabal gets break after break after taxpayer bailout after taxpayer bailout, executive bonus after executive bonus. So the banks have been given every imaginable break to help them out the quagmite they themselves created, and this piece of advocacy is a prayer that they be given yet one more opportunity to lie about their assets. The nations who sacrifice their economic future for the sake of these few banks get what? Does every American get a Citi or a Bank of American dividend check from here on out for having bought these banks? No, we only get them as they were before the deluge. They get the Fed franchise to borrow wholesale while we peons get to borrow at retail.
I realize my thoughts may be seen as vengeful and anti-capitalist. Apologies, that’s not my intent. These SOBs have already gotten a dozen breaks in exchange for their sordid lies, and granting them rights to tell yet more lies isn’t the way out.
Well said.
The only problem (that I can see) with mark-to-market is that it forced a measure of truth into accounting. Forcing banks to adhere to it burst the bubble. But if the assets had been marked-to-market to begin with then at least one market distortion would never have formed.
I can’t see we’d be better off if all those toxic Tier 3 assets carried two values: a fraudulently high ‘accounting’ value, and the very low value people would actually pay for them.
Still, I’m a neophyte at this and could stand to be convinced otherwise.
Neither the Bush nor the Obama Administrations have been willing to allow the market to deal with these institutions that are beyond bankrupt. We are witnessing a repeat of the 1930s approach of government market manipulation through increased regulation, subsidies, and welfare programs that resulted in the Depression lasting for over a decade, in contrast with earlier panics, which usually resolved in a year or two.
This is the quality of the reporting we get these days. No wonder no one from the press ever questioned Obama and his ideas, they are all illiterate! Affirmative action of the Jayson Blair NY times culture.
No, you are exactly correct. The banks want it both ways, they liked the market when it overvalued their holdings so they could then leverage out of their minds, and now they want nothing to do with the market while it discounts their crappy, overvalued holdings now.
The Level 3 lie that is going on is a way for the banks to continue to BS about the value of something. The market has a value for their “assets” and they don’t like the answer. Steve Forbes should know better.
Basically, powerful people made bazillions on driving up real estate values through every form of fraud imaginable. Now they have been called on it: “If it’s so valuable, why don’t you sell it and raise cash?”
“We can’t in a down market,” is the reply, so we need to turn to Washington to change the rules so we can wait out this mess. Eat $#$% and die, the house is worth what smart money is willing to pay for it, %$%$%#&@%, no more, no less.
This would create a natural tendency for banks to want to lend long term fixed mortgages rather than the quick cash, no money down, ARM type loans that are in my opinion little more than junk loans.
Of course, I also believe that people should be financially able to qualify for the loan and actually be able to repay the loan, so I guess that I'm “out of touch”.
Saying it is either mark-to-market or misrepresentation is a false choice.
A one year rolling average could be used, for example.
Maybe it would improve things short-term, but long-term it would just lead to a repeat of the disaster, only worse.
Take the hit now, learn your lesson, and move on. Keep Mark-to-Market.
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