Dangling From The Ledge

I guess the meeting today up in the White House turned out to be a shouting match. Doesn't look like a deal is going to happen. There is a chance at 8:00 tonight they might pull something together.

If by tomorrow morning it seems to be in this much disarray the market is going to go negative pretty fast.

I doubt the market will hold under any circumstances due to buying on "margin: or "leverage". We have passed the point where margin calls would have been made under normal circumstances. I doubt that any of you engaged in this risky practice and know I didn't but entirely too many did. If If the money existed to pay for the "bail-out" it "could" save our investment system. Since it will be accomplished with faux dollars inflation immediately becomes the danger. A statement made by Breneke comes to mind, it seems that whatever we do adversely affects something else.

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"The Keating five included McCain and a Bush"    

A quote from Bill Balsamico!

Wall Street Bail Out

It is very sad that we are in this position at this time (that is to say how close to being a third world country which I talked about in my last address). It is my opinion that we do not give one dime to bail out the GREEDY and CROOKED companies. Where were our leaders while this was happening? Our President and both Presidential candidates keep telling America that the backbone of our country and economy is the everyday worker and small business owner. As a small business owner I am tired of them breaking my back. While the speculators drove up the price of oil we paid and are still paying the price at the pumps while those same speculators made BILLIONS with no risk involved. Ask any small business owner if Wall Street and/or the Government will bail them out if they make bad decisions in business. These people on Wall Street make VERY VERY good money (which they still have in the bank or in their possession unlike the stockholder that they wiped out). Wall Street, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac etc employees are all still working, their fortunes and futures were not wiped out. If the President, Congress and both Presidential candidates pass this 700 BILLION bail out they are telling me Washington business as usual (PORK SPENDING JUST SUPER SIZED and under the term BAILOUT). I believe if no bailout is given the everyday worker and small business will not perish as they lead you to believe. After all we survive every other hurdle Government and big business throw our way. It is time they learn how to survive the way we do, by sucking it up and getting through with no guarantees like the rest of the real world survives. I would rather endure a few bumps in the road than have the Government sell the future of my children and grand children. If the big companies pay and suffer for their mistakes, we (as well as them) will evolve a better and stronger country for it.

Thank You,

Bill Balsamico
Casa D'ice
N. Versailles Pa. 15137
www.casadice.com
P.S. Just think about this: Those working on this BAILOUT are the same people that sat and did nothing to prevent it. MAKES ME WONDER... Let's hope Congress doesn't pass this BAILOUT just so they can go home.

I have a question.

Just how much foreign money is invested in America? If we can't afford for them to pull their investments, why can't we pull our investments in other countries?

Flora

I had a thought about this bail out package. Is it really a bail out package or is it just to protect those in power from losing power?

Ok, I want you to read this:

"At the time of the crash, New York City had grown to be a major metropolis, and its Wall Street district was one of the world's leading financial centers.The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was the largest stock market in the world.

The Roaring Twenties was a time of prosperity and excess in the city, and despite warnings against speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Shortly before the crash, Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." The euphoria and financial gains of the great bull market were shattered on Black Thursday, when share prices on the NYSE collapsed. Stock prices fell on that day and they continued to fall, at an unprecedented rate for a full month.

In the days leading up to Black Tuesday, the market was severely unstable. Periods of selling and high volumes of trading were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery. Economist and author Jude Wanniski later correlated these swings with the prospects for passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was then being debated in Congress. After the crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) recovered early in 1930, only to reverse again, reaching a low point of the great bear market in 1932. The Dow did not return to pre-1929 levels until late 1954, and was lower at its July 8, 1932 level than it had been since the 1800s."

I don't know about you, but I see alot of the same things happening now.

And this analysis about the pre-crash conditions. This reminds me of the housing market and boom along with people getting in on the prospect of their house prices souring and making a quick buck:

"The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market, a significant number even borrowing money to buy more stock. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than 2/3 of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S.[9] The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble."

My father predicted this accurately in 1994. I thought little of it then. Your assessments are on the mark. Our roaring economy of the last few years was on paper only and paper is temporary. If we were so lucky to be dealing with only one problem it would be great. In an attempt to keep the engine running, all aspects of our financial system were drawn into it and mortgages were only the tip of the iceberg.

We survived "29" because we had natural recources and we had industrial capacity. We had WW2 to instigate "trickle down economics" to fuel the recovery. Today we have NONE of these!

Conditions could not be worse!


Slàinte,    

Patch 

The "Keating Five" included McCain and a Bush!       

So the president, a lifelong champion of Reaganism; the radical deregulation, tax cuts for the über rich, gargantuan deficit spending, and trickle-down voodoo economics which is the proximate cause of the financial crisis, now proposes that we give the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was paid $16.4 million a year as the robber baron of one of the now defunct investment banks that did as much as any to engineer this disaster, unlimited statutory authority to buy virtually any assets, on any terms he wants, to hire anyone he wants to do it and to appoint private sector companies as financial deputies of the US government. He can write whatever regulations he thinks are needed, and his decisions are to be legally unchallengeable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. And this unelected political appointee answerable only to the president is going to do this with our money (actually, or grandchildren's; we're broke and already over 9.7 trillion dollars in debt, so we'll have to put it on their credit card); the largest transfer of public wealth to private hands in the history of the world. Once Congress cedes this authority, the elected representatives of the people will have no further say in the matter.

What George Bush (with his curious notions of a "unitary executive") proposes can only be described as the perfect merger of state and corporate power; which is precisely how Mussolini defined Fascism.

When Reagan took office, it was less than 1 trillion dollars (a large chunk of that was WW II, which was being paid off by every administration from Truman to Carter). In 8 years, Reagan doubled it. In 4 years George Bush senior doubled it again. Clinton balanced the budget and spent down some of the debt, invested in the Social Security trust fund, and still left a budget surplus of $236.2 billion dollars to his (alleged) successor, George W. Bush. Now the national debt is over $9,792,000,000, more than twice what it was when Daddy left office, with a 550 billion dollar budget deficit, 300 billion of which he embezzles from the Social Security Trust Fund. If the national debt were in dollar bills, it would be more than enough to reach to the sun and back four times, or to the moon and back 1800 times. 41% of the national debt is owed to other countries, like Japan (who has yet to acknowledge responsibility for WW II and a very, very long list of atrocities) and The People's Republic of China.

Talk about a mortgage crisis; what happens when the world finally forecloses on the planet's largest debtor?

When Reagan took office, it was less than 1 trillion dollars (a large chunk of that was WW II, which was being paid off by every administration from Truman to Carter). In 8 years, Reagan doubled it. In 4 years George Bush senior doubled it again. Clinton balanced the budget and spent down some of the debt, invested in the Social Security trust fund, and still left a budget surplus of $236.2 billion dollars to his (alleged) successor, George W. Bush. Now the national debt is over $9,792,000,000, more than twice what it was when Daddy left office, with a 550 billion dollar budget deficit, 300 billion of which he embezzles from the Social Security Trust Fund. If the national debt were in dollar bills, it would be more than enough to reach to the sun and back four times, or to the moon and back 1800 times. 41% of the national debt is owed to other countries, like Japan (who has yet to acknowledge responsibility for WW II and a very, very long list of atrocities) and The People's Republic of China.

Talk about a mortgage crisis; what happens when the world finally forecloses on the planet's largest debtor?

It the Govt was trying to buy a car today with it's credit worthiness they would be on a bicycle. We will probably soon find out as most of the money we have spent on failures and mergers to date is to protect foreign investors. When I invest money I understand that I am GAMBLING! It is possible that I will loose. There are rating agencies that are supposed to guide us but now we find that S&P ratings are fixed. Most are worthless. I followed the old adage that if it appears to be too good to be true, it probably is NOT true. The foreign countries that took the gamble should have to take their loss. As it is, American shareholders (Pension plans 401K's and people who relied on Standard & Poors ratings have lost everything and the foreign countries got Their money restored. You can tell where bush's loyalty lies! This, unfortunately, has become the bush and Republican philosophy. I have lost a substantial amount of money (by my petty standards) and I do not know how bad my retirement plan was "hit." That folks makes me very bitter!

I do not like the idea that Paulson (Sec. of Treasury) a failed wall street CEO who was recently fired and got a 18.7 Million severance package, is to be given total control of 700 Billion! He couldn't run a business and there are virtually no controls on the 700 B as it stands now.

Clinton was forced into fiscal responsibility by a Republican legislature which shows that "gridlock" is the best govt we can get. This administration had a Republican legislature who rubber stamped bushes plans and THAT ladies and gentlemen is how we got here today!! The Canadians called bush a moron. He is either a moron or a criminal or both.

Slàinte,   

 Patch

The "Keating Five" included McCain and a Bush!        

That's 700 billion dollars at any one time; as he "disposes" of worthless assets we've bought at top dollar off of these Wall Street predators, he can buy more, as long as the portfolio never exceeds $700 billion. The total tab is not specified, therefore is limitless. Most guesses I've read suggest that it'll be at least one trillion dollars; quite possibly more.

No; if this bill passes as written, there are explicitly no controls, no review, and no appeal; it's all entirely at his discretion, and as he's an appointee of and serves at the pleasure of the president, at the whim of King George. Congress and SCOTUS might as well pack up, turn out the lights, and go home.

Yeah; riiiight...the Republican Party has proven to be such good stewards of the public trust that in 20 years they took a federal deficit that took 200 years to accumulate and multiplied it by a factor of 10, except for the Clinton administration, which they bravely "forced into fiscal responsibility"! Can you please explain how that makes any sense at all!?

Power corrupts! Absolute power corrupts absolutely!!!

Slàinte,    

Patch 

 The "Keating Five" included McCain and a Bush!      

Vote Libertarian! Write in Ron Paul! He saw this comming over 5 years ago! And he has a plan!

If only people would do that!

Slàinte,    

Patch    

The "Keating Five" included McCain and a Bush!    

Some of you may know this, but I voted third party in 2000, because I knew that Gore would carry New Jersey anyway, and I wanted Nader to be viable in 2004. But I must say, that I wouldn’t do that this time around, even if they paid too. Clearly Obama is the better man, (no matter his completion), and if he looses, all is lost.
JC