Bill O'Reilly tells his radio audience that conservative ideologues who oppose the bailout and blame this on liberals or on Clinton are complete idiots, because Clinton's been out of office for 8 years - and that it's Bush's fault. ( )
And here McCain just looks completely blindsided by Fox News commentators when they compliment Obama's FDIC statement today, cut to McCain, and say "Ball's in your court."
The Senate measure will graft the bailout language to a tax bill it approved last week, on a 93-2 vote. It includes: a provision to prevent more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from feeling the bite of the alternative minimum tax, $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana and some $78 billion in renewable energy incentives and extensions of expiring tax breaks.
That all sounds okay, except the vague mention of "extensions of expiring tax breaks." I hope those aren't Bush's tax cuts that were set to expire.
Underpants? wrote:The banks seem to be losing either way. A foreclosure costs the institution a shitload up front, to start with. But some foreclosures are becoming a maintenance fee, as well.. Not just for the time on market (electricity, upkeep, etc. for 1 year+). We were looking at foreclosures as investment property, and the majority of the 30-some-odd houses we viewed had been obviously vandalized (holes in walls, broken windows, piss on carpets) by the previous tenants, or maybe just wandering vandals. A handful of them had been stripped of everything. I mean, light fixtures gone, doors removed, the inside water main had been shut off and the copper PIPES had been cut out of the basement. So, right away the bank takes a $20K hit off the top... it's like some kind of rogue society has replaced the one living in my state without me noticing. I asked the broker if the banks went after the jokers who did this sort of thing, and he said not in any of his properties.
That's what's been happening recently, in a lot of places, due to people feeling like they got screwed by the bank.
The problem I'm wrestling with - as far as 'letting it ride' - is that even if we do that, the company's executives are still millionaires, our economy tanks, and we still get the shaft.
It seems like the taxpayer is going to take the hit in this no matter what. Which means that at this point it's all about mitigating our own risks in this cluster.
Corporate lobbyists, trickle-down economics and deregulation have fucked us hard, coming and going. It's also fucked the banks.
It's hard for me to understand how anyone can still support deregulation in the financial sector after this - but most of the Republicans who voted against the bailout bill support an alternate plan, that calls for more deregulation and more tax cuts at the top, to "stimulate" the economy.
The thing is that (ignorant) people totally were getting screwed. Regulation is in place now for the brokers. Something like it it in place when predatory lending and shady brokers were shafting the inexperienced or just plain stupid and lazy may well have prevented the current crisis and whatever further fallout will come of it. It may be another 10 years or more before we know how bad this whole ordeal really is.
r3t wrote:Way to quote the misinformed media there. The 4 billion euro stock buyout is financed by government bonds, so at this moment it is costing no tax money. On top of that, the stocks they bought are not worthless. In fact, once everything settles down and Fortis gets its act together they may even make some money on them.
Aha, so they buy something for free and then sell it back for a profit. Yes, my confidence in Fortis is entirely restored.
Yeah, this stuff is completely alien to me, i should probably shut up. But allow me to make a few more idiotic statements before i do:
I don't even understand the concept of goverment bonds or why anyone would consider it worth anything. How nonexistant money can finance a 4 billion euro bailout is totally beyond me. How said bailout is supposed to restore my trust in that particular company is even more beyond me. It seems to me that arcane financial tricks like this is what caused this mess in the first place.
A government bond is simply a loan to the government. You can buy a bond, and with that you basically lend your money to the state, over which you receive interest. Because a state is generally regarded as a very trustworthy financial institution, bonds are seen as very low-risk.
Now, of course the state has to pay the money it has lend in this way back at some point in time, but that is where my second point comes in. The Fortis stock will probably increase in value over time (which, in fact, it is already doing: there has been a 20% increase in price since the low point last monday), and that measn that those stocks can be sold for a profit.
For the most part it includes what I would want in a package. There are a couple of things I disagree with (no capital gains tax at all, for one), but I would support most of it.
edit: I'm talking about the plan in the PDF, btw -- not the praying part.
Parts of this vid have been posted on other sites but this one has the full content when Stewart really goes off on the idiots in charge of this bailout mess. His rant starts near the end of the clip.
[edit]The link I supplied was a .ca instead of .com...so if you aren't in Canada just go to comedycentral.com and click on the Daily Show link. It's the Sept 30 episode. If you can't access any of the site I recommend you speak to your congressman....or your smelly eurotrash leaders.
Canada has the world's soundest banking system, closely followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia, a survey by the World Economic Forum has found as a financial crisis and bank failures shake world markets.
Britain, which once ranked in the top five, has slipped to 44th place behind El Salvador and Peru, after its government pledged $97 billion this week to bolster bank balance sheets.
The United States, where some of Wall Street's biggest financial names have collapsed in recent weeks, rated only 40th, just behind Germany, at 39th, and smaller states such as Barbados, Estonia and even Namibia, in southern Africa.
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