I have but one life – I toiled for this society – am 50 yo and am not ready to die – this system used me and imo because of the labor population growth the world over, no longer needs me like before

so I wish we had a system in place to know more about you – something tells me your talking your book (and your book alone)

and if we are not carefull the paper pushers will teach the kids how to get ahead – and starvation will not be far behind

And the results will be as botched. You can’ t imagine the destruction, annihiliation and permanent damage reasonable, highly intelligent , the smartest and most persuasive men and women we have can do.

Better to let the market determine everything. Go through the pain and get it over with. We will anyway, and delaying it is likely to be fatal, rather than temporarily debilitating. This is a much needed therapy that the world needs to go through to get back on the road to progress.

Oh. And out of these ashes should come one mantra: NO MASSIVE companies or organizations. Didn’t anyhone learn anything about cloning and how one tine bacterium can wipe out a whole species?

I was thinking about this with GM’s market cap down around 1.6b last week, how it was like a cheap option on 4% of US GDP.

So, what if you were a hedgie with access to 10:1 leverage. You shorted $800m of SSO or even the triple, went long 50.1% of GM and told Congress to go pound sand, you didn’t want any bailout money, you were going to file for Ch. 7. Piss on the writers and buyers of the swaps.

Probably puts the S&P down a couple hundred at least. Cover your short. Offer to sell Congress your GM stake for $5b instead.

And with the drop in gas prices maybe people will buy SUVs again and pull them out of the hole.

One of the tenants of civilized society is care for the young and old. Unfortunately our society is held hostage by the banking Marfia. They have persuaded us that either we keep them alive or we all die.

And who’s going to pay all the CDS contracts that will be have to paid when a big bank goes for chapter 11? Oops?

As a taxpayer, I am equally angry at having my hard earned tax money go to support the war on terror and having it go to bail out companies that should be restructured through bankruptcy to meet changing markets. Or go away.

I agree with you that bailouts are not the answer. I am fully in favor of a prepack for the auto companies with a US DIP financing, a warranty guarantee for car buyers and some sort of financing package for the suppliers who have 28B in trade finance extended to GM. I think that a prepack bankruptcy is a much better forum to negotiate the necessary restructuring than the halls of congress.

In re the banks. The AIG intervention is much less defensible than the Citi. One interesting question that I have is if the SIVs were off-balance sheet because they were not “backed” by Citi, why did the Fed not insist that Citi allow them to fail? Taking those assets onto the Citi balance sheet only further hurt the capital position of the bank. Didn’t the Board have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to prevent the management from bringing those obligations on balance sheet.

I agree that as a quid pro quo of the government intervention into Citi, should be its dismantling. Citi has very valuable operations outside of the US (Latam and the middle east come to mind). These should be sold to shore up the capital base. The old Banamex alone is probably worth several billion. AIG should also be dismantled. The government should probably wait for the markets to stabilize to start the auctions, but given the complexities involved, it will probably take several months to a year to separate the assets.