What we have here is a blueprint for Patriotic Socialism.

“America’s bail-out plan: I want your money”, Economist, September 25, 2008.

This whole finacial mess is scary. I really value you insight.

Leave your chickens out of this. They are blameless.

Check it out

@twist

The only good that I can see is that the meltdown happened when it did. There’s no way for Bush to wiggle out of this and claim he wasn’t president when it happened – he gave Greenspan a medal for doing this to the country! If the housing meltdown had started 12 months later (ie, right about now), the blame would solidly be on the next president. That would be a really bad thing, too – for some reason, a lot of Americans seem to actually care about a person’s skin color or gender. Should a non-rich-white-male win, all the dumb people in the US would have been able to point to the economic crisis as why only rich-white-males should be in charge. Instead, the rest of us get to point to several rich-white-males and say we can probably do better!

As Senators and as leading citizens, they did in fact contribute to the lie that exponential growth in a finite world is possible. It is not, as such scholars as Einstein, Tesla, Hubbert, Hickerson and others clearly pointed out.

We are not victims of presidential blunders, we are victims of attempting to trump physics.

That futile attempt to trump universal physical law has increased our national debt by 3045% over the past 38 years. Game over.

I agree that Bush’s successor has no shot at a decent presidency. No matter how good he is, he will probably end up being one of the most villified presidents in history.

The wheels of change move slowly, but the public has a short memory. The new president will inherit a big pile of garbage they didn’t create [Unless of course you consider that as senators, they were contributors.] but they won’t be able to make it go away, and American’s will undoubtedly resent them for it.

agreed. however, i don’t think either guy has a shot at a decent presidency (no matter how this plays out). whoever ends up in the white house has no chance to really do anything. it’s like a family with 6 high credit cards. they struggle every month just to pay the minimum balances and stay afloat but they’ll never really be able to change anything about their lifestyle. neither guy will be able to even attempt to do anything they talk about because there just won’t be any money to do anything but pay debt.

How can a body who appears totally surprised about the current financial and economic events and who have led an entire nation to the brink of disaster, suggest penalties and wage control on others who have committed the same crimes?

Truth is certainly stranger than fiction.

Wow- did he miss the train, or what?

I suppose that’s one good thing about tighter lending standards. Maybe it will help protect kids like this from themselves. They might think longer and harder about the wisdom of their “investments” if they actually have some skin in the game.

According to Mr. Twist, they were saying on CNBC this morning that senators and congressmen were being deluged with phone calls and letters telling them to “Just say no”. The ratio is 99%-1%.

This really makes me wonder what Congress will demand. The wrong vote here could cost them their jobs.

Oh, that is FUNNY!

What about a thread on “What would you demand if you were a member of Congress”?

Personally, I’m going to remain a renter- too chicken to venture back into the market. That doesn’t mean that it’s the best financial decision [shrinking little dollars are definitely losing their appeal] but it’s what this blogger with a background in botany is doing. [It's been working for me so far.]

A real financial planner might do differently- I’d check.

Twist and John, I have a question(s). I have CD money split between two banks. I am worried that if everything collaspes that I will lose that money. I am wondering if I should buy a house just to have something even though I know prices are going to go down quite a bit further. Any thoughts??

This makes one wonder…
One way to nip these scammers in the bud would be if a LOT of people actually replied to them! (IMPORTANT: people should ONLY reply from a new “fake” email address, using a FAKE name and other FAKE information. These people can sometimes be dangerous, so must have NO idea who you really are). If even 0.1% of the millions of people who receive these scam e-mails replied with “questions” about the scam, or just random musings and so on, the fraudsters would be so inundated with false-positives that they wouldn’t have enough time to figure out who the real suckers are from the fake suckers. They would have to shut down.

Looking at the site, one might erroneously accuse it of being racist, if only because the vast majority of “fraudsters” for this type of scam are of African descent. Personally, i couldn’t care less what background a fraudster has – if he/she is caught, ridiculed, and distracted from potential victims, he/she deserves it!

Just watched a couple hours of CNN & Fox News.
What is so shocking is how this problem is being hyped as being so urgent, unexpected, and completely catching everyone by surprise.

Maybe they just haven’t been reading the blogs the last few years!!!

These things were seemingly only unpredictable to the “smartest guys in the room.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2008/09/22/daily20.html?f=et61&ana=e_du

The housing market is coming in for a soft landing in Denver. Those that bought at the “high” will lose a mere few percentage points.

Gotta love the optimism (H.pylori2 is only responsible for the weather related optimism of this message, the remainder was brought to you by NAR, reminding you that today is a great day to buy a home and to remember the every market is different!)

Igor says EXPLODE

I’d like to go back another couple of years to 1968 when Lyndon Johnson took Fannie Mae private to help finance the Vietnam War (and then Nixon created Freddie Mac as a pretend competitor in the early 1970s). 8/15 ’71 was certainly a key event, but it’s now becoming clear that it happened in the context of what we would now call the greatest off-balance-sheet deal in history.

Igor says COLLAPSE

I love that video! I used to think it was satire, but I’m convinced now that it’s educational programming.