Open Thread

3 Comments

1. 

   robertdsc on October 17, 2008 at 6:55 am

   Goddamned Red Sox.

   • 

     BooMan on October 17, 2008 at 12:08 pm

     Amazing come back.

2. 

   keyman12 on October 17, 2008 at 12:26 pm

   I hope some of you ppl would read this post and comment on it, which I will title

   “WHAT FINANCIAL CRISIS?”

   I firmly believe that until Paulson et al announced that there was an “imminent financial crisis”, and trotted out his now famous  three page manifesto there was only a problem with some bad subprime loans which increased the housing foreclosure rate to a number that caused alarm in sectors of the house industry,  so read my lips

   THERE WAS NO FINANCIAL CRISIS

   There is now a “financial crisis” which has caused huge problems with not only our country but the whole world for sure because the Bush Cheney Cabal needed another 9/11 event to keep peoples minds off the REAL problems facing this country like runaway spending, two bleeding wars, jobs being sent overseas etc. so they would vote for John McCain and they could continue in power. Notice in my list I did not include the “economy”.

   Why?Because while the economy was/still is heading for an recession (the only ppl who don’t believe that have there heads stuck in the sand) we have had recessions before (a natural occurring event in a democracy) and if cooler heads had prevailed the current administration could have done some things to keep the impending recession from getting any worse until at least a new administration was in power Dem or Repug.

   But they need an October surprise so they executed their plan.  The only problem now is that it not only backfired and McCain isn’t getting a bump in the polls, but it has mushroomed into a worldwide problem which is almost totally out of control.

   I could go on but by now you either agree with me or you don’t so I don’t want to waste anymore time trying to convince you of my point.

   I will now lift some quotes from an article by a very learned man Dr Paul Craig Roberts who I hope you will believe if you don’t believe me.

   Its titled

   ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE BAILOUT

   And can be found here……

   http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21034.htm

   Here is his take on the real  reason behind what was done..

   “Just as the Bush regime’s wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order  to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base.”

   Here are a few other quotes and then I will let you read the rest and come to your own conclusions..

   “The explanations that have been given for the crisis and its bailout are opaque.  The US Treasury estimates that as few as 7% of the mortgages are bad.  Why then do the US, UK, Germany, and France need to pour more than $2.1 trillion of public money into private financial institutions?”

   “If, as the government tells us, the crisis stems from subprime mortgage defaults reducing the interest payments to the holders of mortgage backed securities, thus driving down their values and threatening the solvency of the institutions that hold them, why isn’t the bailout money used to address the problem at its source?  If the bailout money was used to refinance troubled mortgages and to pay off foreclosed mortgages, the mortgage backed securities would be made whole, and it would be unnecessary to pour huge sums of public money into banks.”

   “The bailout package is a result of panic and threats, not of analysis and understanding.  Neither Congress nor the public knows the full story.  If the problem is the mortgages, why does the bailout leave the mortgages unaddressed and focus instead on pouring vast amount of public money into private financial institutions?”

   “The bailout package is a result of panic and threats, not of analysis and understanding.  Neither Congress nor the public knows the full story.  If the problem is the mortgages, why does the bailout leave the mortgages unaddressed and focus instead on pouring vast amount of public money into private financial institutions?”

   “The purpose of regulation is to restrain greed and to prevent leveraged speculation from threatening the wider society.  Congress needs to restore financial regulation, not reward those who caused the crisis.”