shock6906

I feel that article to be somewhat misleading. It's as if they're trying to say that the bailout deal would have "only" cost us $700B and not a penny more. I highly doubt that would have been the case, and the taxpayers would have still been paying hundreds of billions of dollars more on top of the $700B bailout.

GTOJack

You would think that members of Congress would have time to read it during the 2 day Jewish holiday break. With the eyes of the world upon them, Congress is dropping the ball, and looking like a bunch of bumbling idiots. Maybe its all a plot to cause a world recession and put downward pressure on crude oil futures.

HuJass

I wish more people would be willing to vote for the independents.

HuJass

I don't know if Congress are a "bunch of bumbling idiots". I think the problem is that most people, including the folks in Congress, don't have any idea about the banking and high finance industry. It's extremely complicated. Several congressmen have said so over the past week. The majority of people in congress are relying on the few in congress that DO understand banking to explain it to them.

So I cut them a little slack. They're trying to wrap their head around something they know nothing about.

Look, we probably put more time & effort into picking an exhaust system than we expect Congress to figure this deal out.

If I were on the hill, I wouldn't be rushing into anything either until I understood the whole deal and knew all the ramifications of any potential decision.


On a different note, there was talk about the gov. just giving us the money. Now I know that internet thing going around had flawed math, but what if the gov. paid off the mortgages of people who are in foreclosure or about to go into foreclosure? That would help the little guy to keep his home, it would give the banks money, it would wipe a lot of debt off the books, and probably other beneficial things.

Doug Harden

I saw plenty of Repubs saying that was not the case and this is, and was a bad bill.....do it right!

Let's not also forget the 93 Democrats who voted against it....12-13 of Barny Frank's own committee members voted against it too.

Personally, I want another way to solve this train wreck without the government socializing the financial system....anyone seen or heard of an "exit strategy" for the government to get the F out of the financial system after this bailout??

Doug Harden

Who's going to pay off my mortgage???

How about just reconfiguring their loans to 40 - 50 - 60 year terms and let THEM payoff their own bad decisions?

Eric Bryant

That would require courage, which modern voters clearly don't have.

On an auto-related note, it's interesting that the $25B bailout for the Big 2.8 (a separate bill from the banking bailout) is set to be signed into law, and yet the stock prices of Ford and GM shares haven't found any upward traction.

flowmotion

What happened yesterday was all political posturing. Its almost a certainty that something will pass -- either some Republicans will come around to support the Bush/Paulson plan, or the Democrats have the votes to push through a more liberal plan on their own.

I think this is a good point. If the government is going to eat the write-downs on these mortgages, it would makes sense if there was some social benefit that came out it. Such as limiting the number of foreclosures and people that will lose their homes.

Personally, I don't particularly like the idea of the government propping up overvalued home prices, but the Baby Boomers are planning on retiring on that money and those old people have a tendency to vote.

Eric Bryant

The problem is not just the devaluation of homes and poor lending practices. Those two together add up to perhaps a few hundred billion in losses - not chump change, but probably not enough to cause anything worse than a moderate recession and a few bad years of bonuses on Wall Street.

No, the problem is that banks were overleveraged, and used a variety of mortgage-derived financial instruments in order to generate a lot of false wealth on paper. This was interwoven into the financial system in such a way that a relatively mild and predictable downside risk (the decrease in home values) created a domino effect that cascaded into trillions of dollars in financial malignancy.

This is why the bill for this fiasco will be somewhere in the 13-digit range, and it's unlikely that pumping that money into the pockets of consumers would fix the problem.

HuJass

Boehner came right out and said Pelosi's speech was the reason why the repubs changed their vote. He said it on camera. And he's the House republican minority leader. So he speaks for all the repubs in the House.

Doug Harden

I saw a group of at least a dozen Repubs and one lady said that "we aren't babies sucking our thumbs....this was a bad bill"....FWIW.

Besides, if that idiot Pelosi wouldn't have sabatoged the bill with her moronic rant it "might" have helped........but since this "collapse" is somehow helping the Arab-American candidate (check his father's lineage at http://kennethelamb.blogspot.com/200...ut-ethnic.html ), I can see why she sabatoged it.

HuJass

Doug,
Are you in jeopardy of losing your home? Are you on teetering on personal bankruptcy?


I look at it this way, if you're going to give money away, give it to the people who actually need it, not the irresponsible rich people who will just use the $700B to move on to some other money making scheme while the everyday joe will STILL lose his house.
Yeah, maybe a LOT of people made bad decisions on the house they bought, but so did all these bankers and Wall St. players.

There has to be a better answer to this crisis than $700B going to rich people.

HuJass

First off, that lady you mention probably said that after she saw Barney Frank's remarks. It's called damage control. The repubs came across as big babies and EVERYONE knows it. The commentators were talking about that fact all day yesterday. And again, that lady is not the House leader. Boehner is.
BTW, Frank derided the repubs for not passing the bill just because of what Pelosi said. He got it right. The repubs put their party before the country. Unacceptable.

And the fact the repubs are still calling her speech sabotage. SUCK IT UP. Their only words. They don't mean anything.
It's just like a little kid saying, "you're being mean to me! I'm taking my ball and going home."

The repubs need to GROW UP!!!

Chrome383Z

No bailout for mortgages. You could get a 30yr/fixed (same as I did), for not much more then an ARM loan. You would have to be a complete IDIOT NOT to do it and everybody did being typical American's wanting more then they can afford now. It's time for a reality check. We were living TOO well, unsustainably well.

I have no sympathy for anybody over this. I moved money out of the stock market because I saw this coming a LONG TIME AGO when the housing / financial market was completely out of control. Absolutely ridiculous, but nobody could overlook the money they were making and the McMansions they were getting into for cheap.

I bank with with a bank who is in no means in ANY trouble because they didn't get into this Subprime and Crazy Lending tactics. I actually researched my banks to make the decision of where to keep my Savings.

Also, you can never go wrong with Gold; etc.

I say let it all fail. It maybe a rough few years, but in the long term will be much better then the govt stepping in and Socializing everything.

Doug Harden

Tell that to the 93 Democrats who voted against it and then Pelosi could have passed this POS bill without the Republican vote....the Democrats are in control of this POS Congress....