WoW! The people pulled the levers of Congress this time. Let's keep up the pressure.

From Jim in San Marcos, who blogs as The Great Depression of 2006.

THE CRASH DEFINED

A crash is pretty much just a redistribution of wealth, from the rich to the poor. The very rich stand to lose 90 percent of their wealth. With the poor, 90 percent of nothing is still nothing.

The bail out is a tax on everyone in the country ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 depending on the fool talking. For a family of 4 that’s $20,000 to $80,000. If you consider that 3/4ths of the population pay little tax, this is going to be a very heavy wagon to pull.

If we do absolutely nothing to fix the mess, there will be a blood bath. The top 10% of the population get their lunch in Spades. After that, Mr. Rich guy is going to be looking for a job.

This doesn’t mean that we silver foxes walk away Scott free. We are going to get burned badly. That would have happened after the bail out failed anyway. We can’t print our way out of this mess, but can't we let the idle rich implode into nothingness?

If the government wants to do something, let the house of cards collapse. Then print money to keep people in food and shelter; this is a transfer payment I understand (plus it is a government responsibility). There should be no bail out support for the super rich. Paulson kiss your absurd 700 million dollars goodbye.

This event if understood for what it is, is a great redistribution of wealth. With the government buying failed assets; it doesn’t make them worth any more. What good does it do for the government to own them? Private industry has a loss, let them eat it!

We have survived one House of Representatives vote, we need to make sure that they understand, that we understand that printing money won’t solve the problem. This cannot be pushed into the future. The money is not there even if it was an option.

If you have a moment click on THIS LINK and express your concerns to your Congressman. Do we give the rich their money back? ---Or do we say “Suffer with the rest of us!” Vote now, and write your Representative a letter. I really think that we are being listened to, take the time to give your Representative your view; we are not billionaires, just voters.

Remember one thing, for government to pay the bills, we the people have to earn it. There are no quotes around the word earn. This next election could be all about, “Toss the Bums Out.” We don’t need a President as much as we need Congressmen that have some testosterone.

Please do me a favor and click on the link and give your Congressman you view, we can’t print our way out of this mess.

Thank you and good night

Stark Raving Math!!!

The nation's social bargain with the rich
The Boston Globe
By Derrick Z. Jackson September 30, 2008

CONGRESS has been rushing to save financial CEOs from themselves with a $700 billion bailout that amounts to a tax of $2,333 on every man, woman, and child in America. This is after three decades of the nation's leaders punishing struggling Americans for their lack of personal responsibility, from Ronald Reagan's assault on "welfare queens" to the bipartisan slashing and capping of welfare benefits by President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

More recently, presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have said undocumented folks should pay fines to get in line for citizenship.

Then, of course, there were the 1.5 million home foreclosures last year and the 2.5 million foreclosures projected for this year by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Many economists and politicians have washed their hands of them, saying, tsk, tsk, they were irresponsible for taking on too much responsibility!

If scapegoating struggling Americans on personal responsibility fails to work, we just ignore them, as sure as the Ninth Ward of New Orleans remains the American Dresden after Hurricane Katrina - while rebuilt Gulf Coast casinos break new revenue records.

All those millions of Americans, facing everything from slashed food stamps to swamped homes, live in a patronizing America where Clinton signs the 1996 welfare bill by saying, "We're going to take this historic chance to try to recreate the nation's social bargain with the poor. We're going to try to change the parameters of the debate. We're going to make it all new again and see if we can't create a system of incentives which reinforce work and family and independence. We can change what is wrong."

No broad parameters are being changed for greedy or incompetent Wall Street CEOs, as the financial sector assures itself a compliant Congress with $2 billion in campaign contributions since 1990 (Obama and McCain have respectively received $25 million and $22 million in campaign contributions from the financial sector in this campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics).

Negotiators on the hill do say they will tax bailed-out companies for executive salaries over $500,000, but Wall Street found its way around similar rules in the past.

Yesterday, amid increasing outrage, the House failed to pass the bailout bill.

No bailout should happen without recreating the nation's social bargain with the rich. The nation can no longer afford the disparity where the average American CEO makes 344 times the pay of the average worker, according to the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The CEOs and their boards should pay toward the bailout before a penny of that possible $2,333 comes out of the pockets of Americans.

There is more than enough money among the financial elites to pay for the bailout. The Institute for Policy Studies last week calculated that a securities transaction tax of a penny for every $4 invested would add $100 billion a year to the treasury. Had such a tax been in place after the 2001 Enron scandal, it would have added up to the current cost of the bailout.

A wealth surcharge of no more than 3 percent on households worth more than $10 million would add another $300 billion. In response to the news this year that two-thirds of American corporations paid no income tax between 1998 and 2005, a corporate minimum income tax could add another $60 billion.

The institute said a 50 percent tax on salaries of $5 million or more and 70 percent on salaries of $10 million or more - until the bailout is over - would add another $105 billion. Killing overseas tax shelters, loopholes for excessive CEO pay and the sale of mansions, and creating a progressive inheritance tax would add another nearly $300 billion.

Institute senior scholar Chuck Collins said that would be a much more fair way to deal with the consequences, and discourage a worsening of "casino capitalism," than the rush to dump this on the taxpayer. "Many of these things have been examined, but not implemented," Collins said, "But Congress essentially punted on how to pay for the bailout."

If Congress is the punter, the people are the football being kicked once again far downfield as Congress and the CEOs high-five with relief from the skybox.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.

Video - a miracle of science

Interesting video clips of congressional hearing in 2004 relating to the regulation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac, although I don't remember Obama ever naming Franklin Raines his economic advisor.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Red Cross to Greenwich - we're on the way...

WSJblogs   September 25, 2008, 9:00 am

For Greenwich, ‘This Is Our Katrina’

With markets continuing to swoon, the next shoe to drop is likely to be hedge funds. That means tough times for hedge-fund filled Greenwich, Conn. (As Nick Paumgarten wrote in the New Yorker magazine recently, “If New York City is the heart of the marketplace, Greenwich is the liver, where toxins are processed and rich bits collect.”)

                                                               

Greenwich collected so many rich bits in recent years that its small population of about 60,000 contributed nearly $600 million in state income taxes in 2006. In other words, Greenwich pays 13% of all state income taxes in Connecticut with only 1.8% of the population.

According to an article by Christopher Keating in the Hartford Courant, the town and state are bracing for lower tax revenue. There are no signs yet that Greenwichers are hurting–Saks, Tiffany and Brooks Brothers are still busy and the local Rolls Royce dealers (there are two) say their clientele is largely immune.   Yet local residents like Lehman Brothers’ Dick Fuld–he of the $700 million stock loss–just won’t be writing the big tax checks that they used to. Charities are expecting a lighter haul this year.
There also is the human cost to the financial floods, the collective psychological breakdown that occurs when Greenwich’s billionaires become mere millionaires.
“It’s the human toll that is frightening,” said State Rep. Livvy Floren, a friend of Mr. Fuld. “Dick Fuld has spent 39 years of his life doing this. It’s more than just money. They’re not going to be in the streets starving….I think the man worked 24/7. His family and Lehman are his life.”
A deeper analysis was offered by local Democrat Ned Lamont, who in one fell swoop compared Greenwich’s money woes to the Japan malaise, Asian tsunami and the New Orleans flood.

“It really is a financial tsunami, and it could go either way,” said the multimillionaire telecommunications mogul who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006. “It took Japan 20 years to recover from their buying binge. How long does it take us to work through excessive leverage? That could take years not months. This is our Katrina.”

Hello Kitty, Hilter, Pork-pies,...

...Scary bail-out plans, Paulson, and Republicans, who by the way, I find myself in agreement with at the moment.  Today they balked at the hastily crafted "compromise" "credit" "rescue" deal...

"...Instead, they issued a statement of economic rescue principles that calls for Wall Street to fund the recovery by injecting private capital - not taxpayer dollars - into the financial markets. Easing tax laws would prompt investors to put in their own dollars, they said.

The plan also calls for: participating firms to disclose the value of the mortgage assets on their books, ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's securitization of "unsound mortgages," reviewing the performance of the credit rating agencies and having the Securities and Exchange Commission audit failed companies to ensure their financial standing was accurately portrayed.

House Republicans also want to create a panel to make recommendations for reforming the financial industry by year's end."

Jesus was a community organizer...

Oye I’m tired. I stayed up till 4am trying to get through a 825 comment thread at Daily Kos regarding the financial crisis. So many pissed off commentators! Seems I’m not the only one screaming mad at this latest breathtaking grab by the wealthiest members of “our” society. I’m not trying to be reasonable here, cause there is nothing reasonable about the deliberate destruction of the middle class. Here is my sleep-deprived easy-as-pie 3 point program to restore confidence in the financial markets:

Step 1. Have the UN declare Wall St a “terrorist state” and freeze all the assets (paper?) Next prosecute the heads of the top banks, the top regulators, and Paulson. If they flee to St Barts instead of standing trial, let’s do some shock and awe on St Bart’s. Let our most traumatized and depleted Iraqi soldiers get first shots. Shooting from airplanes will be allowed.

Step 2. President Obama, instead of handing $700 million to these slime-balls plunderers, make them pay back to the US Treasury $700 billion. Trust me, they have it.

Step 3. Never return to the quaint Victorian notion of a free-market. Free markets are free-for-alls, ie, survival of the greediest. Attempt to recreate the America I learned about growing up in school, the one I never saw in my 50 years. Fairness, justice, responsibility...ideals that were offered up as history, but now turn out to be fairy-tales.

Help - I'm down to my last $32 million, buddy can you spare $500 Billion?

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. economy will shrink if markets don't begin functioning normally, joining Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in urging skeptical lawmakers to quickly pass a $700 billion rescue for financial institutions.
“Paulson and Bernanke urged senators on the banking committee to quickly approve the unprecedented $700 billion plan to prop up the shell-shocked U.S. financial system, saying failure to do so would risk the stability of financial markets and the U.S. economy.”

Oh how I laugh, chortle chortle - choke. Ya see, in the “other America” where most of us live, we’re already “shell-shocked” from 20 years of greedy capital markets reaming us. If anyone asked me, I’d like to see the financial markets have their stability undermined, and not function properly. From the other America, which hasn’t functioned properly for years, it would be nice to have your company.

Of course, that would make Wall St a part of America again. I’d bet my bottom, or even “under a buck” dollar (someone will make up the diff - right?) that living like regular Americans is a fate worse than death for the financial f@#k-heads who have just run the capitalist system into the ground.

Bail-out? I say get in line Wall St scum-bags. The line starts about 250 million back.

Or, better yet - bail ourselves out. Cash in your Swiss bank accounts, your Cayman bank accounts, sell your third and fourth homes and a few of your sports cars, and yes, even shutter your “private family foundations” if you need help. You’ve already had the taxpayers help, for like 30 years now. We’re tapped out.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. ~Edward R. Murrow