Recent comments

  • When you see things like this which are so dramatic, but don't have time to write up a full bore blog post (why does DK have everyone trained to say diary? ;)), you can use the Instapopulist.

    If you go to create content->forums and then select the category or if you go to the left (on the green/yellow site, not available on the blue version) and click on forums, those are fly out menus. You just select which category it goes under and then click create new topic.

    That will immediately be posted in the Instapopulist, middle column and more importantly, also goes out into the RSS news feed. We have a lot of people subscribing to the news feed and they bop over to read something when something new is added to the RSS feed.

    I guess I should change the left title to Instapopulist so it's more clear.

    And just when you think the new guy posting a blog post is out of his head, talking about money supply, bam they doubled the money supply. ;)

    Reply to: The Dollar Crosses The Rubicon and Class War   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Money is just an exchange unit for goods and services. It could be rocks or widgets or hell, let's make the world all Linden dollars (kind of already is!).

    Liquidity, which is another term being bantered around right now, is what it sounds like....liquid. Can an asset be transformed easily into something else? If I have to pay up, can I? I might have $500k coming to me but it might be in 2 years while since I cannot right now make my car payment, repo men are right outside. They don't care about 2 years from now, they need to be paid right now. Liquidity is timing. Can something be sold easily for something else? What they are talking about when they say liquidity is there are no buyers for sellers and the real problem is they don't believe the "assets" are worth anything. What this means right now is they don't believe anyone can pay back the money and it also means right now they do not have the money to loan because they need to cover their asses to pay up because a lot of bills are coming due for banks due to defaults.

    Petrodollars is the amount being paid for oil. It's another index in so many words.

    A global currency to get rid of fluid exchange rates between nations....that's so one world order! ;)

    It's also kind of what the EU did with the Euro but it takes years of planning and fairly stable economic systems to do that.....and then the final "peg" of the original currency to the new governing one.

    What would that do globally? I have no idea actually.

    Reply to: A Global Economy is a Transfinite Economy   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is unprecedented. Maybe I should have waited another day to post this diary. Look at this.

    Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

    The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks to $620 billion from $290 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand to $450 billion from $150 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

    The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, comes as Congress prepares to vote on a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

    ``Today's blast of term liquidity will settle the funding markets down, and allow trust to slowly be restored between borrowers and lenders,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. On the other hand, ``the Fed's balance sheet is about to explode.''

    Reply to: The Dollar Crosses The Rubicon and Class War   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Nice videos ;-)

    Reply to: Sunday Morning Comics - Subprime Edition   16 years 2 months ago
  • Says basically new pay cannot be issued while the Treas. Secretary holds an asset and also just says a "payment cannot be made" but only while an asset is in holding. There also appear to be significant other loopholes so I don't get the impression it would stop any pre-negotiated agreements...which every executive puts into place before they even accept the job.

    It looks like swiss cheese, highly limited, at minimum surely not this advertised claim that the executives are not going to get their large sums of money.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is an "all things economic site". While we'll talk about immigration related issues, but only from some very solid statistics and in terms of economics....

    the minutemen is a little outside the scope of this blog.

    Most of us really question this even working and don't think it's a good plan by that's by analysis primarily.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • mickwd1
    minuteman justice
    NO BAILOUT
    NO TAKEOVER

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • mickwd1
    minuteman justice
    I just finished reading the first twenty pages of the bill.
    That was enough. I don't care how much intervention occurred with any opposition to the original plan, but the manner in which this sits presently is wrought with potential malfeasence, manipulation, and impropriety, and the language in which this proposal is defined, wreaks of an underlying motive by those whom the plan places in control.
    For everyone's best interest, this thing must not succeed nor pass. Please, everyone, make the call to your representative and demand that this not succeed.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • and still do not totally understand the interaction of this financial meltdown in the face of such foreign debt and holdings (except it seems to imply a 3rd world type of cliff)....

    but what I don't understand is gold futures are way way down right now. I would assume that gold would be going up through the roof.

    Reply to: The Dollar Crosses The Rubicon and Class War   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • There is nothing in here to modify the bankrupty laws to enable renegotiation of mortages on primary residences and simply defers to the previous act which was counseling....yes millions of taxpayer dollars to explain to you how you are fucked.

    Aren't you glad all of those taxpayer dollars go to counseling instead of the real problem...you need mo' money!.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I know this is going like wildfire through the blogs that the Democrats tried to redirect 20% of this money to La Raza and Acorn.

    I have looked through this latest draft and that funding appears to be removed.

    This clause confirms:

    (d) TRANSFER TO TREASURY.—Revenues of, and
    proceeds from the sale of troubled assets purchased under
    this Act, or from the sale, exercise, or surrender of warrants or senior debt instruments acquired under section 113 shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I have to step out so I'm hoping others read the actual bill text (believe me, more nasties get buried in legalize and they can be stuck in there in non-published amendments, "managers" amendments, conferees, ya name it, most often per the demands of lobbyists!)

    for it's over 160 pages. That said, last I saw in analysis and from my first scan it appears that Paulson has absolute control over pricing...i.e. not a damn thing is changed (which is one of the biggest issues from economists from "all schools of thought".

    Happy reading!

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • is an important question in this deal. Also what are we buying.

    Are we buying bad loans to balance the financial companies books? If so at what discount rate are we getting the asset?

    Getting a loan at 60 cents on the dollar, and then passing those savings onto the mortgage holder in the form of a cut in monthly payments means that we can do two things.

    1) Limit losses to the financial companies, and (hopefully) restore liquidity to credit markets.

    2) Limit the collateral damage of keeping millions of people onto the street.

    The United States government can give money to the companies now so that can exchange an asset for money now.

    I would prefer to see an outright nationalization at market prices.

    The current market cap of AIG is $8.47 billion. On September 8th it was over $61 billion.

    If we pay the current market price, and offer a premium matching the Sept 8th price up to $100,000 per person including fractional ownership through mutual funds, then we might be headed someplace.

    I think however, that the idea is to just pour in good money after bad.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
  • More discussion and alternative measures should be presented. It's jumping in with both eyes closed that got us into the Iraq war. "I" knew there were no WMD's..and so did you. Our government misinforms us and doesn't listen. Let's "make" them listen this time....

    Reply to: Do you Believe the Bail Out is Simply a Corporate Takeover of the United States Via the Shock Doctrine Method?   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm sure everyone is grabbing the bill as fast as they can get it but in this first scan by me, it sure appears that it's all up to Paulson in terms of pricing the assets...
    (not lookin' good for them to take a loss in other words).

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • The price? Will the banks be force to take some losses now?

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think it will depend a great deal on which companies sell assets, but consider the ownership at AIG. (You can check ownership for any stock at Yahoo fiance under Company Profile>Ownership>Major Holders.

    So we can see that the UK's Barclay's has almost 95 million shares valued at close to $2.5 billion on the 30th of June. Now that the stock has collapsed and is valued at $3.18 share, that value has fallen to just over $302 million. An almost 90% drop in value in not so many days.

    Barclay's lost the equivalent of its net income from the 2nd quarter of 2008 in this one instance alone. Foreign ownership is the norm. Barclay's also had their hand in at Lehman Brother's.

    A lot of this cash is going to head overseas, not stay in the US.

    And some of the courters for failed US banks are going to be European. Spanish banks in particular seem to be eying an entry into the US market. Banco Santander and BBVA in particular. Spain's in the middle of real estate decline too, but there's a lot of Spanish money that's finding it hard to head to South American like it used to. So they've discovered the United States.

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
  • The new language promises that the taxpayers are repaid in full....if other protections have not actually produced a profit?

    What other protections????

    Who will guarantee the repayment to the taxpayers...the Chinese? The Petro-Rich Russians? The Saudis. A mere $700 Billion? Future taxpayers?

    Who in the hell do these scam artists think they are, to pull the wool over our eyes so obnoxiuosly?

    Did anyone notice, in the original bailout draft of 21 September is mentioned extending the National Debt to $11.315 Trillion. Not a word about this in Pelosi's release.

    Who will pay off this debt? At 5%, this represents an annual interest rate of $565 Billion; at 4% $452.6 Billion

    Fred Teeboom
    Nashua, NH
    603-889-2316

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I can completely believe, especially because foreign capital has been keeping the US afloat for some time that this is true, but do you have references on the estimates of how much will be going to foreign banks?

    (don't ya love this old story dressed up as a new story called globalization....more like let's turn the US into a S. Am. 3rd world financial disaster zone, now will the world bank loan us money at some sort of extortion rates?)

    Reply to: The Deal - Latest Detailed Text of Bail Out - Updated. Legislation Draft - Actual Bill   16 years 2 months ago
    EPer:

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