Government Bailouts
Who’s Really Paying For The Bailout
Ever wonder where our government is going to get the $700 (or $750 or $850) billion it needs for the bloated bailout bill? The same place is gets all of its credit these days, China.
October 17, 2008 | Read More
Any Fool Could Have Seen This Coming - Including This One (Part Three)
More on how my 1988 book The Captive American discussed the same economic foolishness we see today.
October 14, 2008 | Read More
Any Fool Could Have Seen This Coming - Including This One (Part Two)
Way back in 1988, I wrote a book called The Captive American. I happened to glance at chapters 14, 15, and 16 the other day, which discussed the economic troubles facing our country back then. I was stunned by how little has changed. What’s the old saying? Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it? Take a look at what I wrote 20 years ago and see if our failure to learn from our mistakes doesn’t break your heart the way it broke mine:
October 14, 2008 | Read More
From Crap Sandwich to BLT (hold the lettuce, tomatoes)
On Monday, the House rejected the bailout bill. Today, that same body approved it. What changed in five days? Pork, that’s what. The bill might have been a “crap sandwich” last week. But by the time the Senate got done with it, it was a double-decker BHL: as in bacon, ham, and lard. Apparently, spending $700 billion wasn’t enough.
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Is the Wall Street Bailout Really a Government Bailout?
Only a week after passing a state budget, California now says it needs $7 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The LA Times broke the story this morning when it “obtained” a letter from Governor Schwarzenegger to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. I’ll bet you twenty dollars against a truckload of Bear Stearns stock that Paulson leaked that letter to pressure dissident House members who are scheduled to re-vote on his $700 billion bailout. But isn’t this the ultimate Voodoo Economics? Sign a bill into law, buy up a few hundred billion in worthless bonds - ie: stick a pin in a doll and click the heels of your ruby slippers together - and suddenly, magically, funny money will start gushing onto the marketplace again.
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Paulson Caused the Crisis
The net capital rule was there to make sure Wall Street could bail itself out in case of a crisis. But because the SEC gave geniuses like Henry Paulson what they wanted and eliminated the rule in 2004, we the taxpayers now have to pay the tab for their recklessness. This is the man that now wants a $700 billion blank check - to fix the crisis that he caused!?
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Subprime Bedfellows Craft the Bailout
With senators falling over themselves to vote for the $700 billion bailout package yesterday, let’s not forget that before the housing meltdown, two key senators were all too willing to benefit from a major player in the subprime scandal.
October 2, 2008 | Read More
The “Courage” to Vote for Country over Party?
In today’s SF Chronicle, Carolyn Lochhead catches our lifetime politicians accidentally telling us the truth when it comes to business as usual in Washington. Lochhead quotes John Boehner, leader of the House Republicans, asking his colleagues to consider “not what is in the best interest of our party, not what’s in the best interest of our re-election (but) what’s in the best interest of our country.” Lochhead then writes that Democratic leader Steney Hoyer rose and praised Boehner “for his courage.”
October 1, 2008 | Read More
Blaming Main Street
George Will finally says (and Andrew Sullivan agrees with) what a lot of people - especially politicians - have probably wanted to say since the housing bubble popped : the real villains aren’t mortgage brokers or bond sellers or investment bankers, but home buyers:
While I do not disagree that people living…
October 1, 2008 | Read More
Bailing Out - Too Little Too Late
We need less CYA and more TBC in Congress
About the only good thing you can say about the bailout debacle of the past week is at least it was a bipartisan failure. Two thirds of House Republicans and more than a third of Democrats rejected the $700 billion bill. But the fact that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle spit the bit and defied their party leaderships does not mean they did the right thing, or that 228 habitually spineless politicians all magically evolved backbones over the course of one weekend. As the AP pointed out, many of the…
September 30, 2008 | Read More
