Well, which is it? The bailout package gets voted through, are we a communist society or fascist? Unless the equivalent of the S.S. or S.A. are sleeping in cars outside senators and congressmen’s homes, this doesn’t exactly sport the trappings of a fascist trend, IMO (current administration foreign policy ventures notwithstanding).

speaking about usurpation of power, fascism etc. check this:

In similar circumstances, January 1933 saw the rise of two bold and innovative fiscal/political regimes that eventually managed to restore confidence in their constituents and get their economies moving again. One was even generally approved of by America’s senior business leaders.

Igor jailed your comment — must have thought it was another Nigeria-scam style money demand

I’m going to repeat that amazing subtitle in letters of fire: FDIC Chief Bair wants home loans part of $700 billion bailout plan; says banks holding up well

You’re right, and I’m opposed to creation of a blind pool creation in the name of expediency. At the end of the day, though, everybody either believes in reliquifying the current system or replacing it with a different system, with its attendant infrastructure and regulatory delays and discoveries.

Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with letting stupid bankers drown in their own idiocy, but if the government doesn’t get ahead of the curve, we will see the mother of all bank runs – the money market funds which have broken the buck so far are the tip of the iceberg. As was noted on CNBC last week when Steve Liesman or somebody put up the pictures of the lines outside the banks in 1930 or whenever, those lines are what the current proposed legislation is trying to avoid. As has also been pointed out, the real economy is also being affected as uncertainty reigns; the cabal to get “blank check” legislation passed is occurring because the government NEEDS a sense of normalcy restored to the real economy, and that first requires a sense of confidence in the credit markets.

Maybe that’s next weeks panic- when they pass this $700B “pig-in-a-poke” and can’t find the funding for it.

I miss the old days [like a couple of weeks ago] when our primary focus around here was housing. Unfortunately, until we know how badly Washington bungles this one, it’s hard to know how housing will go.

It is only when democratic government is suspended, that enabling acts get passed.

Having the nation broke doesn’t scare me near as badly as this.

I’ve been watching Paulson- his answers aren’t good enough for me. I hope they aren’t good enough for Congress.

Igor says “bankrupt”. It’s hard to know if he means morally or financially.

FDIC Chief wants home loans part of bailout plan
Tuesday September 23, 2:37 pm ET
By Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer
FDIC Chief Bair wants home loans part of $700 billion bailout plan; says banks holding up well

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080923/financial_crisis_fdic.html

This may be true for the 1st mortgage debt – the problem is the bailout will include credit card debt, student loans, car loans, etc. The bailout plan is to “clear the pipelines” of bad debt. It could very well be the mortgage part is something of a canard – the problem that is getting the headlines. Come to think of it, maybe this is where all those HELOCs will end up.

Have you seen CBC’s The Border?

twist -

I presume this guy hasn’t seen our H.4.1 charts

“Financial Crisis: Capitalism is not dead yet, but Anglo-Saxon finance is looking weak: Measures taken to deal with last week’s devastating financial falls may only be storing more trouble”, by Dan Roberts, Telegraph, September 23, 2008.

The biggest irony is that just as the US Treasury is now standing behind the US banking system as the lender of last resort, the Chinese government stands behind the US Treasury as its lender of last resort. Were the Chinese to stop recycling their giant trade surplus by buying up US government debt, the resulting panic could make last week’s crisis look like a storm in a teacup.

You should refer to it as an enabling act. It’s rather like the one Hitler sought, except that it suspends economic rights, rather than civil rights.

You haven’t reported on whether the clause denying court reviewability, is Constitutional, or whether questions have been raised about it. It’s pretty clearly unconstitutional, because it abolishes due process with respect to actions taken under it.

However, the fact that the clause is in the legislation, shows that it is a Hitler-style enabling act.

By the way, enabling acts of this sort usually do NOT get approved as long as democracy is the form of government. It is only when democratic government is suspended, that enabling acts get passed.

So, what this means is that we are facing a political crisis, which is what I predicted.

Once this fails to pass, you will see the powers square off politically.

Only when the on-the-street economy collapses will Joe Suburbanite realize that the political structure has been destroyed. Right now suburbia is still driving its cars, using its credit cards, trudging to its meaningless employment, and watching its cryptofascist TV shows.

Who’d want to bail out scum like that?

Loving this debate on valuation, method and scope in the Senate Banking Committee, btw.

Worse than the economic implications to me are the constitutional issues. Even if the Dems manage to get judicial review back in the plan [I never in my life thought that I would be giving thanks for Shumer, Dodd and Frank!"] the implications for this power grab horrify me.

The Founding Fathers put up with a lot of economic distress in the name of freedom. I worry we are surrendering that freedom in the name of protecting our McMansions. Then to add insult to injury- it won’t work.

Whatever the dollar amount, the value just changed from “What the market will bear,” to “What a sucker’s willing to pay.” Suckers don’t make money on their purchases- they overpay and lose their shirt.

Or in other terms, all this spin coming from The Street and Bush Co. is like putting lipstick on a pig…

The federal government “stands a good chance of making a profit” from the plan, Gross, the chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco), told CNN television.

Seriously, I call shenanigans. If the federal government ‘stands a good chance of making a profit’, then why would a purely for-profit entity try to get rid of something that ‘stands a good chance of making a profit’? I know the answer, but this spin just makes me sick. It makes me sicker that the uneducated populace in America will eat it up. :/

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