Obama Opens Up a 9-Point Lead

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
As I understand thinks, the government is to get warrants in the companies.

WTF?! And you think this is a good deal?

Look these ****ers are foreclosing on our houses. People, if they are lucky, are ending up in shelters. And you want to bailout these ****ers?!

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
Look, if I buy a pack of gum from you for $1.00, and I later find out that it's only good enough to re-sell for $0.40, that wasn't a mere "gift." It's just that simple.

Are you brain dead? THIS IS A RESCUE! The value of the ****ing **** is worth what we say it is!

[Zkribbler]

I'm saying the deal isn't as bad as you make out.

Personally, I don't have enough information to make an informed decision.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
I'm saying the deal isn't as bad as you make out.

Personally, I don't have enough information to make an informed decision.

It's not a deal at all. We aren't getting anything near equal value. This is a ****ing give away.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Kidicious


It's not a deal at all. We aren't getting anything near equal value.

That's what's called a "bad deal."

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Ramo

Then define what you mean by enough support from House Rs

Sufficient support that there's a deal. Which there were indications of early in Thursday. The revolt happened later.

If you were following the news early in the day, everyone was talking about an imminent deal. Then it fell through.

I'm still waiting to see evidence for any House R support for this so-called deal from any House (not Senate!) leader at any point in the day. All evidence you claim supports you (at least that which you saw fit to post) leads to the conclusion that it wasn't McCain that killed it as the deal never had the support the people announcing it claimed. In fact the piece Imran posted points to him being key to any compromise legistlation on this subject.

[Aeson]

The deal as proposed is awful. Criminal even. (Or at least what I think should be criminal) The actions of the Treasury under this bill have no oversight and cannot be reviewed. Holy ****! Get your heads out of your asses people. You don't just hand someone $700bn no strings attached and give them a get out of jail free card at the same time.

This is highway robbery.

And yes it is a gift to buy gum for $1 when you already know it's not worth $1, no one else is even bidding for the gum (which in a real free market is what the current value of the gum is... no bid), and you know the seller of the gum has no other option but to sell the gum.

[Lancer]

So Aeson, what do you think of the conservative Republican proposal?

[Kidlicious]

Has anyone else considered that we are going to be borrowing money for this bailout. So we are going to be putting an equal amount of securities on the market. But people are saying the treasury will get a decent price for these.

Also, Ron Paul opposes a bailout and Ralph Nader wants a much more limited bailout and comprehensive reform.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Lancer
So Aeson, what do you think of the conservative Republican proposal?

Well I haven't read the actual proposal, are you talking about this?

I'm all for getting rid of capital gains (and income) tax... shifting to a VAT to encourage investing and saving... Suspending CGT though, for 2 years, is very very bad at some point in those 2 years. Given that I think we hit bottom (at least on the indeces) in a year or two, it makes the bottom deeper. That's really all it can do. It will artificially drive down prices, as every asset you sell in that timeframe is worth 15% more than if you hold it for 2+ years. (At least for most investors who don't know how to get around CGT already). "Sell Mortimer, Sell!"... not like we don't have enough reasons to sell already. (I will get to the character limit before adequately expressing this... so just use your imagination. Its essentially the number of 's that article 8 in Paulson's plan gets - 1.)

Re-establishing tighter control over leveraging ratios (If we're back to the ~10x leveraging, instead of ~30x leveraging, this doesn't all happen again. Or at least nowhere near as ugly.)

Only doing the above for the F's that have already failed

Regulation for the Fed to defend the value of the dollar (Good idea, but I have full faith in congress to be able to **** that up. In fact the proposal seems to do so concurrently.)

Having the Fed keep rates artificially low while pretending to do the above... priceless. Keeping rates artificially low deflates the currency. There's just no way around it. You can't bolster the value of the dollar by doing what devalues the dollar

Suspending mark to market is just going to get us in this mess again. If you're leveraging yourself you have to have liquidity to back it up. Having highly leveraged institutions investing in hard to move assets is going to fail every single time. This just says to the market, "You know what? Go ahead and invest in anything, leverage yourself up on it, when the house of cards comes crashing down, we'll bail you out again."

I think there's more to it, basically having the Government start insuring these MBS instead of buying them. I think it's just misdirection, as we're doing this because these institutions are going to fail otherwise... and so if we're insuring them (instead of propping them up directly) we just take the hit when they fail. There may be more to it than that, so couldn't say... but in any case I don't think now is the time for the US government to be jumping headfirst into the MBS insurance scam.

I'd rather just give the 700bn away (or shoot it into the sun). At least that way we wouldn't be encouraging (or emulating) the patently absurd behaviors that got us into this mess.

[Lancer]

I don't know about such stuff, that's why I was asking you. I'd heard that the conservatives were for not taking over the bad debt though.

[Kidlicious]

$700bn stimulus package

**** these guys.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Lancer
I don't know about such stuff, that's why I was asking you. I'd heard that the conservatives were for not taking over the bad debt though.

When you insure something, you are essentially offering to "buy" what is insured (at the insured price) if it fails. Which is why I don't see much difference between insuring and buying in this case.

All it's really doing is the government saying, "Instead of bailing you out because you are failing, we'll guarantee that we'll bail you out when you fail." It could actually work, but I think that would be worse for us in the long run than if it failed. Because we will have set the standard. No risk to risky, no leverage too high, because until the US Gov itself fails, everyone is insured.

[Lancer]

Yes, that is very worrying. No reason not to take every insane risk if the taxpayers are forced to bail out.

[Victor Galis]

Moral of the current story is that failing seriously is bad and you'll lose everything. Failing catastrophically in ways that can ruin the world's economy... no problem.