I need some help on this one ladies.

[Jeannie]

Hi ladies
It's 3:30 am saturday morning and Marley was barking his freakin' head off and I had to take him out for a walk to calm him down and I had a thought about the rescue bill just passed by Congress. let me know if I wrong.
Our government told us we have to have this bill to protect not wall street but main street. Loans will dry up and none of us will be able to borrow for houses, cars or our small business expansion.
They start out with a three page bill from George W Bush and the House of Representatives adds another 100 pages and it fails to pass. Then it goes back to the Senate and comes out with 1000 pages with another 110 billion of pork barrel spending.
They consult with wall street experts and Warren Buffet and they say" Yeah! This is a great piece of legislation!"
The Congress passes the bill on friday. Terrific. They give 700 billion dollars of taxpayers money to wall street investment banks so they can loan our money back to us with interest. Does that make sense or is it just me?

Love
Auntie Jeannie the miffed

[Lydia]

Hi Jeannie,

Key phrase:

they can loan our money back to us with interest

This is worse than "taxation without representation" - It's being screwed twice, and paying the screwer.

Hugs - an equally confused

Lydia

[Kimberly Kael]

I'm somewhat torn on it, though admittedly I haven't read nearly enough on the matter to pretend to understand it all in depth. I am as dismayed as anyone at the addition of so much unrelated garbage to the bill but that seems to be the way to get things done in government. Our elected representatives won't vote for anything that doesn't throw them a bone, for which we should yank them all out of office.

The economic rescue part, though? There's a very real problem with people borrowing money for houses they can't afford. The individuals should have known better than to buy a house that was too expensive, government shouldn't have pressured the banks to makes loans available to anyone regardless of the financial situation, and the banks shouldn't be leaning on appraisers to value homes at the sale price.

Now people are walking away from homes they shouldn't have bought, there aren't enough people who can really afford them homes to sell them to, and in any case they're probably not really worth enough to cover the outstanding loan. So many people seems to share a part of the blame here that's it's hard to just let everyone fail lest a lot of bystanders get caught in the mess.

It's a major blunder, and I hate it. On the other hand I didn't expend the time and energy to come up with a better solution except "let the house of cards fall." It's not clear that would be a good thing, either. People who didn't share any of the blame could stand to lose a lot of money that isn't FDIC insured when banks go under.

[Jennifer M]

I may be way out of line for saying this but I will say it anyway.Being independently poor I have nothing much left for the government or Wall street to take away.I can handle being poor,I have had practice at it.I think its time for the rich folk who mostly created this situation to see what being poor is about.I only wish them a little ill will even though it is bad Karma.I am just tired of getting the short end of the stick all the time.

[PattiG]

Kimberly, I think you got it pretty right.

Jennifer, I hate the bail out and all the attached pork and no changes in what caused this mess. However, from what I've read from sources I respect, the alternative is a prolonged, disasterous depression with very high unemployment, innocent business failures, etc. I think we only have choices between bad and extremely bad. Yes, those responsible in business AND government should be strung up. Unfortunately, that won't happen. Japan went through a similar problem 20 years ago and still has not fully recovered.

Patti

[Michelle Miller]

I've never been into politics...

I'm for anarchy & open rebellion, though.

[Lori A]

Learn who your Congress person and Senators are, and if they voted for the bail out and are up for re-election vote against them. I guess on the top ticket it's a toss up. They were both for it. Sarah should be on top of the republican ticket. She may not have any foreign policy experience, but what has experience got us? We need some one in there with the ability to think logically.

[Frances Jewell]

What you needed to do at 3:00 AM was to have gone to the cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Taxpayer subsidized Virgin Island Rum (in the Bill Sweeteners) and drowned your financial concerns while contemplating where our elected "Leaders" could shove one of those taxpayer subsidized wooden arrows. These clowns are beyond all comprehension. Take a break from your concerns today Jeanne and drive over to a car dealers lot and pick out a new car for yourself - if its one of the American Big 3 - you probably own anyway - with the 25 Billion dollar bail out they got a week ago.


Fran

[Lori A]

It would save us all a lot of tax dollars if the President had the "Line Item Veto" and knew how to use it. It never fails to amaze me how no matter what the spending bill is for, they always pack in more pork than a sausage factory for crap that have absolutely nothing to do with the original proposal. Humans have been using wool since Adam and Eve, and yet they pack in grants, not loans, for wool research. If instead of grants they made loans to all these researchers that they had to repay with interest from the gains of their product development there might not be as many frauds on the tax payers teat. I get sick and tired of the congress spending money that they aren't given the power to spend. The Constitution doesn't say we have the right to good health or health care, merely the pursuit of happiness. And on education, they have been throwing more and more of OUR money at it every year for as long as I can remember,and yet the kids are getting dumber and dumber every year. Ask one to make change without the help of the electronic cash register. Look at Barack, he said he had already campaigned in 57 states and he thought he had one more to go, and he be edjukated. And if a woman has a right to an abortion, why are we forced to pay for it? not getting any help to pay for my medical bills.
Three quarters of a Billion of our dollars to bail out the fat cats with the golden parachutes bigger than the GNP of North Korea, and Barack Hopes to spend another Trillion in change. I Loved America while it lasted.

[Absaroka]

To explain this on a more serious note, if I owe the bank $1000 and can't pay it that is my problem. If I owe them $1000000 and can't pay it that is now the banks problem.

If we went with strict supply and demand the market and economy would eventually correct itself. Unfortunately in the mean time there would be lots of collateral damage and quite a bit of it would be inflicted on the little guy. Lets face it, the rich and powerful will always be with us, demanding more than their fair share and throwing their weight around. And when they don't get what they want they do bad things like sink the economy and topple governments. Remember that Hitler was elected by the little people in Germany as a response to an economic depression that hit Germany far harder than it hit us. When the economy gets really bad the usual response is group violence and unfortunately it doesn't usually target the folks who really deserve it.

Anyway Jeannie I have to say that this is mostly your fault. Your planning was poor and carried out ineffectivly. A far better plan on your part would have involved being born into an extremely wealthy family and then using means that were far more effective than the ones you obviously did use to consolidate your wealth and power so that the bail out would be rescuing you instead of other people after you were reduced to your last hundred million in savings. Try to do better next time.

The sad thing is that every time the rich and powerful are done away with a new group of rich and powerful emerges to take their place, China or Russia or a variety of Latin American revolutions being perfect examples. Sort of like those nasty diseases that evolve to combat antibiotics.

Absaroka

[Kimberly Kael]

... three quarters of a Billion of our dollars ...

Let's be clear about this. It's three quarters of a trillion of our dollars. It hardly seems real, does it? Billions are hard enough to get your head around and another three orders of magnitude makes it just about impossible to fathom.

... and yet if just 2% of the population of the country takes out a $100,000 loan that they can't afford to pay back? $700 billion right there, easy. It adds up in a hurry.

[Jeannie]

Hi Girls
I know that so called experts said we have to pass this bill or face economic collapse. 700 billion is not even close to the loses on wall street. There will be more failures coming up and Wachovia was just another casuality.
Take for instance Countrywide. One of the biggest mortgage companies in the US. The CEO ,Angelo Mozilo is now on skid row since the company was driven into bankruptcy. I feel for him. Read the following article from The Los Angelos Times and you will want to send him a few bucks.

"If he engineers a sale of battered Countrywide Financial to Bank of America, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to walk away with a severance package worth more than $110 million, the Los Angeles Times' Kathy Kristof reports tonight.

Such a payout would come on top of huge gains Mozilo has made selling Countrywide stock during the mortgage crisis. As the mortgage industry went into a nose dive in late 2006 and 2007, Mozilo cashed out about $140 million in stock options, becoming one of the highest-paid executives in the country, the L.A. Times reported in November.

The newspaper reports tonight that in his contract agreement, which extended the 69-year-old's employment contract through 2009, Mozilo was guaranteed three times his base salary, plus a cash payment equal to three times the greater of his average bonus or the incentive bonus paid the previous year. Net value: $87.8 million.

In addition, Mozilo has two pensions that his severance agreement gives him the right to receive as a lump sum upon his departure. Those pensions were worth $24 million as of December 2006, the last time the company was required to report their value.

There is more. The Times reports Mozilo would receive continuing health benefits for life for himself and his spouse, three years of life and financial planning benefits, and "tax-gross-up payments" to compensate him for any penalties he'd have to pay for receiving payments the IRS might consider excessive.

Given the slashing of 10,900 jobs at Countrywide this year, and the 81% decline in Countrywide stock over the last year, it is likely Mozilo's severage package will prove more controversial than his previous stock sales."

I know you must all feel so special like Moi. The best is the executives bail out of the stock before the bad news hits Wall Street and they hand the loses to average Americans with 401Ks and a few hundred shares of the stock. How nice.I'll post a poem I just wrote.
This market is going down and there's no stopping it. Brace yourself ladies. The inmates are in charge of the asylum. Hugs
Love
Auntie Jeannie