Comments on: Time to Overhaul the Bailout Plan

By: Patrick Neid

Patrick Neid — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:20:58 +0000

Humpy Dumpy sends his regards to all the interventionists.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:14:57 +0000

ottovbvs, if you think TARP was a success, I would invite you to go now to your neighbor and ask him to pay your debt obligations for the next 10 years. In exchange for 4.5 interest for the next 10 years, pay your debt obligations and their own. And then look him in the eye and determine if this fits your definition of “success.” If it does, then I would agree with you. TARP has been wonderfully successful.

I know it is troubling for bank insiders to formulate defense of capitalist ideas and legal precedence in this country, defend such things to colleagues in house or in public forums. If you cannot first formulate good defense of capitalism, I doubt genuinely you can be very persuasive in your defense of troubled asset relief programs and their foreign initiatives. You might as well star in a commercial about how you are counting clouds or butterflies with your 8 year old daughter (which I think better represents the attitude of most bankers who have seized assets of others in the 20 to 40 years prior to October 2008).

merrily merrily merrily merrily ……………

By: TheReformedBroker

TheReformedBroker — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:34:20 +0000

ottovbvs:TARP while not perfect has achieved what it set out to do

so I guess it set out to be a “woodchipper” to feed other peoples money into

By: ottovbvs

ottovbvs — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:19:21 +0000

roc Says:

January 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

BR does run a great site. I check it most days but I’m afraid he’s veering off into Lou Dobbs land with this one. Of course you then get a Greek Chorus of confused bumper sticker logic from some but that’s life. I think we basically agree that TARP while not perfect has achieved what it set out to do.

By: dunnage

dunnage — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:33:08 +0000

How about to hell with Reform?

How about to hell with infrastructure and energy?

How about to hell with tax cuts?

And try Stimulus now. Give a ton of cold cash to every single person in the country.
The Japanese gave stimulus money to foreign residents. Why? They are not into ethics, they are into a damn stimulus.

Then do middle class tax cuts, infrastructure, energy. Oh, and reform — Uh, huh.

By: Mark E Hoffer

Mark E Hoffer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:31:05 +0000

“I had a sudden vision of NYC falling apart like Detroit did after auto manufacturing left.”

Ken,

I can, only, guess that you’re saying you’ve been there..

LSS: NYC is crumbling, physically, as we speak, and has been ‘falling apart’ for, over, half a Century..

Your Orbit may perturb..

By: Paul Jones

Paul Jones — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:25:10 +0000

The “Bailout” worked as designed: Peter was robbed to pay Paul. Now, are you Peter? Or Paul?

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:11:12 +0000

TheReformedBroker wrote: “at least this money kept the bonuses coming for the bankers…the last thing they want is for the cost of living to come down in NYC”

I had a sudden vision of NYC falling apart like Detroit did after auto manufacturing left.

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:09:28 +0000

Interesting article from our friends of the Austrian School of Thought.
Great Credit-Crunch Hoax of 2008

Probably the most important measure of credit-market conditions is the amount of commercial-bank credit outstanding. These figures show that although the middle part of 2008 does stand out in the long view, it does so not by virtue of credit’s frightening contraction, but only by virtue of its hitting a six-month plateau from April through September.

At no time during that interval, however, did the amount of commercial-bank credit outstanding fall below the amount outstanding at the beginning of the year. In short, credit was actually ample, indeed, at an all-time high; it simply stopped growing as usual for six months, stuck at about $9.4 trillion, while one Wall Street wizard after another told NPR that “no money is moving, the credit market is completely shut down” or some such cock-and-bull story.

After the six-month pause, commercial-bank credit zipped upward again, so that by the end of the year, the amount outstanding stood more than 8 percent higher than it had a year earlier. Some credit crunch! Année terrible, indeed.

But don’t write off this silly little hoax too fast, because, however baseless it might have been in economic reality, it was manifestly good enough for government work. And that work has now placed US taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars of additional Treasury commitments and put all holders of US dollars and other dollar-denominated assets at risk of tremendous losses of their money’s purchasing power.

By: TLO

TLO — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:40:43 +0000

Hank Paulson is at best an inept fool, who cowed a bigger bunch of fools to give him $700B to do as he pleased. If people think he’s a smart strategist with clear goals and objectives, then he’d be a lying, cheating scumbag who cheated taxpayers of $700B. Either way, that TARP money is now lining the pockets and vaults of the incompetent and unconscionable CEOs of these institutions that were a factor in this fiasco as well as the shareholders of these institutions.

Congress didn’t do their due diligence and got scared into passing legislation by Paulson and Bernanke’s words of doom. Yet, they were still able to take their time and add an additional hundred pages of legislation to it. Of course, with all the work they put in trying to add legislation to help their “constituents” they failed to look at the big picture. Tax exemption for makers of children’s wooden arrows?! What does that have to do with making sure the TARP funds are used in an effective manner? It sure doesn’t provide oversight to where the money goes.