| Author | Message | ||
     Hexangler |
M. Thanks for the flashback! CJ's first live show I ever saw...28 wonderful years ago. | ||
| Rocketsprink |
Common people. The economy is fundamentally strong. Just ask the Maverick and the Clown!! | ||
| Ducxl |
Ralph Nader for Prez I'm going to vote AGAINST the two frontrunners........NOW (Message edited by ducxl on September 19, 2008) | ||
| Corporatemonkey |
Blake, I was already in the process of writing a response when I came upon a great article that explained HR5660 in simpler terms. If you want to read HR5660 in detail go here http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill= h106-5660 You need to pay attention to section III This is from the July issue of MotherJones magazine http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/fo reclosure-phil.html Foreclosure Phil Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown." /> David Corn" /> May 28" /> , 2008" /> Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure. Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania. But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history. It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century." It didn't quite work out that way. For starters, the legislation contained a provision—lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm—that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed. (For Gramm, Enron was a family affair. Eight years earlier, his wife, Wendy Gramm, as cftc chairwoman, had pushed through a rule excluding Enron's energy futures contracts from government oversight. Wendy later joined the Houston-based company's board, and in the following years her Enron salary and stock income brought between $915,000 and $1.8 million into the Gramm household.) But the Enron loophole was small potatoes compared to the devastation that unregulated swaps would unleash. Credit default swaps are essentially insurance policies covering the losses on securities in the event of a default. Financial institutions buy them to protect themselves if an investment they hold goes south. It's like bookies trading bets, with banks and hedge funds gambling on whether an investment (say, a pile of subprime mortgages bundled into a security) will succeed or fail. Because of the swap-related provisions of Gramm's bill—which were supported by Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury secretary Larry Summers—a $62 trillion market (nearly four times the size of the entire US stock market) remained utterly unregulated, meaning no one made sure the banks and hedge funds had the assets to cover the losses they guaranteed. In essence, Wall Street's biggest players (which, thanks to Gramm's earlier banking deregulation efforts, now incorporated everything from your checking account to your pension fund) ran a secret casino. "Tens of trillions of dollars of transactions were done in the dark," says University of San Diego law professor Frank Partnoy, an expert on financial markets and derivatives. "No one had a picture of where the risks were flowing." Betting on the risk of any given transaction became more important—and more lucrative—than the transactions themselves, Partnoy notes: "So there was more betting on the riskiest subprime mortgages than there were actual mortgages." Banks and hedge funds, notes Michael Greenberger, who directed the cftc's division of trading and markets in the late 1990s, "were betting the subprimes would pay off and they would not need the capital to support their bets." These unregulated swaps have been at "the heart of the subprime meltdown," says Greenberger. "I happen to think Gramm did not know what he was doing. I don't think a member in Congress had read the 262-page bill or had thought of the cataclysm it would cause." In 1998, Greenberger's division at the cftc proposed applying regulations to the burgeoning derivatives market. But, he says, "all hell broke loose. The lobbyists for major commercial banks and investment banks and hedge funds went wild. They all wanted to be trading without the government looking over their shoulder." Now, belatedly, the feds are swooping in—but not to regulate the industry, only to bail it out, as they did in engineering the March takeover of investment banking giant Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, fearing the firm's collapse could trigger a dominoes-like crash of the entire credit derivatives market. No one in Washington apologizes for anything, so it's no surprise that Gramm has failed to issue any mea culpa. Post-Enron, says Greenberger, the senator even called him to say, "You're going around saying this was my fault—and it's not my fault. I didn't intend this." Whether or not Gramm had bothered to ponder the potential downsides of his commodities legislation, having helped set off an industry free-for-all, he reaped the rewards. In 2003, he left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at ubs, Switzerland's largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for ubs on banking and mortgage matters. There was a moment of poetic justice when ubs became one of the subprime crisis' top losers, writing down $37 billion as of this spring—an amount equal to its previous four years of profits combined. In a report explaining how it had managed to mess up so grandly, ubs noted that two-thirds of its losses were the fault of collateralized debt obligations—securities backed largely by subprime instruments—and that credit default swaps had been "key to the growth" of its out-of-control cdo business. (Gramm declined to comment for this article.) Gramm's record as a reckless deregulator has not affected his rating as a Republican economic expert. Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters. The two have been buddies ever since they served together in the House in the 1980s; in 1996, McCain chaired Gramm's flop of a presidential campaign. (Gramm spent $21 million and earned only 10 delegates during the gop primaries.) In 2005, McCain told a Wall Street Journal columnist that Gramm was his economic guru. Two years later, Gramm wrote a piece for the Journal extolling McCain as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, and he's hailed McCain's love of tax cuts and free trade. Media accounts have identified Gramm as a contender for the top slot at the Treasury Department if McCain reaches the White House. "If McCain gets in," frets Lynn Turner, a former chief sec accountant, "we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain." As a thriving bank exec and presidential adviser, Gramm has defied a prime economic principle: Bad products are driven out of the market. In John McCain, he has gained an important customer, so his stock has gone up in value. And there's no telling when the Gramm bubble will burst. David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington, D.C. bureau chief. Subprime 1-2-3 Don't understand credit default swaps? Don't worry—neither does Congress. Herewith, a step-by-step outline of the subprime risk betting game. —Casey Miner Subprime borrower: Has a few overdue credit card bills; goes to a storefront lender owned by major bank; takes out a $100,000 home-equity loan at 11 percent interest Lending bank: Assuming housing prices will only go up, and that investors will want to buy mortgage loan packages, makes as many subprime loans as it can Investment bank: Packages subprime mortgages into bundles called collateralized debt obligations, or cdos, then sells those cdos to eager investors. Goes to insurer to get protection for those investors, thus passing the default risk to the insurer through a "credit default swap." Insurer: Thinking that default risk is low, agrees to cover more money than it can pay out, in exchange for a premium Rating agency: On basis of original quality of loans and insurance policy they are "wrapped" in, issues a rating signaling certain slices of the cdo are low risk (aaa), medium risk (bbb), or high risk (ccc) Investor: Borrows more money from investment bank to load up on cdo slices; makes money from interest payments made to the "pool" of loans. No one loses—as long as no one tries to cash in on the insurance. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Pat Buchanan The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people's wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another. The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The "Omnipower" and "Indispensable Nation" we heard about in all the hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history. Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of market economics, a failure of conservatism. This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko ("Greed Is Good!") capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great. A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means. Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess -- that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk? "Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government -- the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy? For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt -- all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid. Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars. We are going to have to learn to live again without our means. The party's over Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent. But this generation decided that was yesterday's bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into "global companies" and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers. As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad. At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar. Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load. John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or "bomb, bomb, bomb," with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere. Who are we kidding? What we are witnessing today is how empires end. The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars. What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system. Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen. Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves. An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators. What the Greatest Generation handed down to us -- the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved -- the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away. | ||
| Rocketsprink |
Seems strange that this was foreseen by many, yet the powers that be decided it wasn't important enough. Now, without Congressional approval, Bush decides to heap it on the tax payers backs. This Country got EXACTLY what it deserved by putting that failed "trickle down theory" die hard, do nothing, war monger idiot in office for not one, but two terms. I put what is going on right now squarely on the shoulders of GWB. If we vote another follower of these same failed theories into office, this Country will go the way of the Roman Empire. This entire administration needs to answer for their short comings. They need to be held accountable for doing nothing. Problem is, I didn't vote for the guy either time, yet I have to suffer like everyone else. They call the Democrats the Tax and Spend Party. I call the Republicans the Spend and shove it up our ass when it's too late party. Where's your Mccain/Palin saviors now? Fundamentally Sound. They got the mental part right. Good thing Social Security hasn't been privatized. Be a lot of people without any money right now. Thanks Bush.....for nothing. | ||
| Corporatemonkey |
I have always thought of Pat Buchanan as a total douche, but that article (while a bit feisty) was basically spot on. Rocketsprink, There is plenty of blame to go around on this one. Yes, GW is an idiot. We know that, we have always known that... But this stuff didn't get passed through because of him. Everyone was too busy/lazy to actually check what the so called "brains" on Wallstreet were doing. Not that very many of them would have understood it. Even into this year the brains were telling us everything was fine, even though behind the scenes the house of cards were falling apart. Most of congress were fat and happy as their constituents were able to run up debt on the cheap. It will be a long time before we clear this mess, and worse once that happens we are still left with the check. That check could very well end us  | ||
| Corporatemonkey |
To follow up on my post about Phil Gramm, there was NY Times op-ed peice last weekend by WILLIAM R. GRUVER. If any of you watch Jim Cramer, this article was featured on his show tonight. http://tinyurl.com/3nxucd September 13, 2008 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR A Big Regulator for the Little Investor By WILLIAM R. GRUVER LEWISBURG, Pa. ALMOST six months ago, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed an ambitious consolidation of the regulatory agencies that police the nation’s financial system. Unfortunately, since then the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve have been so busy reacting to crises — just this week, taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and trying to broker a sale of Lehman Brothers — that these long-term, systemic remedies have been punted to the next president. The idea of a financial supercop should be embraced by a McCain or Obama administration. The place to start should be with a re-examination of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which removed the 66-year-old separation between commercial banks (the kind that accept deposits and make loans) and investment banks (the kind that underwrite securities). The separation began with the Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act because it was written in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929 by Senator Carter Glass of Virginia and Representative Henry Steagall of Alabama. The idea behind it was twofold: first, diffuse what was thought to be an excessive concentration of financial power in a limited number of large institutions, and second, prevent unsophisticated investors from being sold risky investments when they thought they were placing their savings in what we now call money-market accounts. By 1999, however, the idea that risky investments and public deposits should never be offered by the same institution had become an anachronism of the New Deal. Foreign banks like UBS and Deutsche Bank engaged in both underwriting and in lending and deposit-taking, which put American banks at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. But when lawmakers permitted commercial banks and investment banks to merge into new behemoths like Citigroup, they did not follow through on the logical implication of their idea — fusing the industry’s regulatory overseers into a similar colossus. Instead, Congress allowed the government’s financial regulatory structure to remain stuck in the 1930s, split among an array of agencies. This piecemeal alteration of the law is continuing today. Earlier this year, for the first time since Glass-Steagall was enacted, the Federal Reserve allowed investment banks direct access to cheap, short-term loans from the Fed’s discount window — a privilege that by law had been limited to commercial banks. It was a necessary government response to a crisis. But the issue of oversight, of increased responsibility in exchange for increased privileges, remains unaddressed. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (another one of Carter Glass’s creations) needs to be amended to permit the Fed to oversee both investment banks and commercial banks in a financially integrated world. We must avoid simply merging regulators and hoping for synergies. We need a system that focuses on the prevention of crimes and crises (similar to the British Financial Services Authority) instead of aiming only for after-the-fact discovery and punishment. Right now, the Securities and Exchange Commission conducts backward-looking audits, searching for past transgressions. Instead, federal regulators should focus on guiding companies, helping them to adhere to sound principles of risk management and to avoid imprudent business practices. It is also time, though, to build a new wall of separation. Today, complex financial instruments like structured investment vehicles and auction-rate securities are marketed to unsophisticated buyers ranging from retail investors to corporate and government treasurers. In 1933, Glass-Steagall addressed the imbalance of power between the investors and the providers of financial services by separating the providers into commercial banks and investment banks. Seventy-five years later, instead of trying to limit what products innovative financial firms can offer, it would be more prudent to limit the markets to which they can sell their wares. In other words, the customers, not the companies, should be divided. This could be accomplished by extending the current system of government classification of “qualified investors,” used to limit who can invest in things like hedge funds. By demonstrating expert knowledge or the ability to absorb loss (because of high net worth), qualified investors could be given a pass into the caveat emptor world of modern Wall Street. Those without the inclination, the sophistication or the deep pockets to qualify would be limited to the more closely regulated menu of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. The lesson from the financial crises of the 20th century is that responsible politicians are not socialist demons trying to destroy capitalism. Carter Glass saved American capitalism through prudent regulation that prevented past excesses without stifling new innovation. The next administration will need to accomplish that feat again. William R. Gruver is a professor of management at Bucknell University. | ||
| Cyclonedon |
"Common people. The economy is fundamentally strong. Just ask the Maverick and the Clown!!" the clown is good looking, but just not very smart, but then again neither is the Maverick! | ||
| Cityxslicker |
There is another financial mess that is waiting in the wings. Insurance companies can lend money, sell loans and refinance and are not under the same FDIC surety requirements that banks are under. Thinking stay the course is cr@p. I am pulling it all out and putting it in tangible solid assets, gold, silver, platinum, diamonds. And a secure lock box out of CONUS. | ||
| G234146 |
+1 w/Ferris_von_bueller | ||
| Court |
Interesting for anyone who'd left town for a week and returned to see the market was down a mere 34 points. An economy that was not fundamentally strong would never rebound show such resilience. I confess to tampering with the market last week. Frankly when Morgan Stanley went down to 11 for no reason other than momentum it just seemed like time to roll the dice for a couple thousand shares from the ol' 401K. It closed at 28 and I am once again in treasuries . . , my one big day of speculating done. If your neighbor sold a bike for $2,000 would it make your 2009 Buell worth $2,000? Think. | ||
| Blake |
Wow, citing the NY Times Op Ed page and Mother Jones as a source for factual reporting?  You might want to consider the another side of the story. Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even ''on the page'' of allowable interpretations. From http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0 (Message edited by Blake on September 22, 2008) | ||
| Blake |
So you have Grahm's bill, which was supported nearly unanimously, and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. Then you have McCain's regulatory reform bill, which was blocked by the Democratic party. Given the facts, it sure takes quite an imagination and lots of gall to try to blame the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FM&FM) debacle on the Republican party or the Bush administration. Did you happen to see who the top three recipients of FM&FM campaign contributions were?
Some folks might need hit on the head with a shovel to get the picture. I don't. (Message edited by Blake on September 22, 2008) | ||
| Ducxl |
Wallison wrote at the time: ''It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. Seems like a lot of people uttering that phrase lately. THanks for the insightful discussion so far. Pat Buchanan's pretty cool too | ||
| Ducxl |
The lady senator Bachman from Minnesota was just on CNN stating yet again that we cannot Socialize losses.She stated we were told the waters would calm after Bear Stearns,AIG 85b,did i forget one? Now we're told the only thing to calm the waters is this 700 BILLION bailout,at a future cost to each TAXPAYER of $2300. Why MUST it COST ME to bail out POOR financal managers! WHAT AN OUTRAGE!!!!!!!!!!! Can we sue the US government for mis-use of taxpayer dollars? What they're doing is illegal! (Message edited by ducxl on September 23, 2008) | ||
| Azxb9r |
On the news yesterday I heard that the proposed bail-out is going to cost so much, the next president will be financially handcuffed, and will not have the funds available to do much of anything. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
It's painfully apparent to me there is no consensus amongst those "in the know" on the best course of action for resolving this mess. Frankly, I find that troubling, considering this crisis has the potential to be far more painful to the average American then anything experienced in many, many years, including natural disasters. On the one hand, some are calling for intervention with the potential to cause more harm than good, in the long run. On the flip side of the coin, others call for no government action with the high likelihood of catapulting the country, if not the world, into a deep recession if not outright depression. As Court says, "interesting times". I wish to add, " scary times". (Message edited by ferris_von_bueller on September 23, 2008) | ||
| Swordsman |
Luckily I've built up enough padding over the past few years that I can stand to miss a few meals.  ~SM | ||
| Spatten1 |
Pat Buchanan's pretty cool too No, Pat Buchanan is a bigoted piece of shit, whom happens to be right about many political matters and is well spoken when he is. | ||
| Ryker77 |
The last time Bush warned us about "possible" dangers was when he scared/tricked us into attacking Iraq. No way in hell will I trust Bush now on giving up $700,000,000,000,000.00. All that money will do is temporaly allow the crackheads money managers to smoke more crack. It will just allow the false economy built on DEBT to continue. At some point we need to understand allowing our job to be exported and illegals workers to be imported has hurt us. A service based economy runs on debt. We are out of gas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5WiE6MnmCM | ||
| Ryker77 |
The United States Government is capitalizing on a comprehensional failure of the human mind, the inability to fully grasp the magnitude of large numbers. Upon hearing numbers beyond a few thousand, say ‘three billion, nine hundred eighty seven million, six hundred forty-two thousand, nine hundred fifty seven dollars and sixty-seven cents’ and our brains interpret it as, “wow, that’s a big number” with no true handle on exactly how big. Therefore, I feel it is time to give the minds of the American public a real grasp on large numbers. According to the United States treasury, a One Dollar Bill has a thickness of 0.0043 inches, top to bottom, less than five thousandths of an inch. One thousand One Dollar Bills would be one thousand times thicker. Therefore, $1000.00 would be 4.3 inches thick, or the diagonal screen measurement of many popular navigation devices. Taking this analogy to the next logical step would be to move from one thousand dollars to one million dollars. One million is one thousand thousands, so the thickness of $1,000,000 is a thousand times thicker than the stack of $1000.00 – or 4300 inches. Convert this number to feet (divide by 12) and this becomes 358.3 feet. A football field is 360 feet, so one million dollars in One Dollar Bills stacked one on top of the other would be 1 foot 9 inches shy of an entire football field, and yes, that includes the end zones. One billion — $1,000,000,000 would again be one thousand times thicker than one million, or 358,333.3 feet, a little more than 995 football fields with their end zones. In miles (divide the number of feet by 5280) this is 67.866 miles – the approximate driving distance from New York, New York to Milford, Connecticut. That is a stack of One Dollar Bills that is nearly 70 miles high, and this analogy has only gone to one billion dollars. One Trillion is one thousand billions. Numerically this is 67.866 miles times 1000 – one trillion One Dollar Bills stacked one on top of another is 67,866 miles. The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles. A one trillion dollar stack of One Dollar Bills would circumnavigate the globe, at the equator, 2.73 times. 2 ¾ times. Around the globe. And that is just ONE trillion dollars. | ||
| Blake |
"The last time Bush warned us about "possible" dangers was when he scared/tricked us into attacking Iraq." The Bush-deranged trying to rewrite history are too funny. But to the point, I like the position outlined below. We are living through one of the most challenging periods in modern America. | ||
| Blake |
As far as numbers go, its all relative. I think folks do get it. Engineers work with huge numbers all the time. The modulus of elasticity (stiffness) of steel is 29,000,000,000 pounds per square inch (PSI). The modulus of carbon fiber can exceed 100,000,000,000 PSI. Relative to the compressive modulus of lightweight 5056 Aluminum alloy honeycomb flexcore, which is just 65,000 PSI, those large numbers quickly gain meaning, more so when you are trying to design a large SatCom antenna (dish), that will hold its shape to within 0.010" when subjected to gravity at all operational elevation look angles and 45 MPH winds. | ||
| Blake |
How's that for thread drift? I guess the bottom line Ryker is that I pretty much agree with your view of the bailout scheme, but I don't care much for your rabid Bush-deranged commentary. It is off-putting and detracts from the issue at hand. Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of congress including key members from both political parties all vociferously raised the alert, some more so than the administration, concerning Saddam Hussein and his WMDs simply skirts the true history of the issue. Nuff said, please let that issue drop or take it up in a more appropriate thread; look through the Backfire Board; you're sure to find one there. (Message edited by blake on September 24, 2008) | ||
| Spatten1 |
I drove a Tesla, a new electric sports car that goes 0 to 60 in 3.8 seconds. It is a Silicon Valley invention built in San Jose. It is telling that it was not designed by the old auto world or produced in Detroit. While Silicon Valley has been creating new wealth, new technology and new products, the city of Detroit has been decaying. In 1950, Detroit had 1,800,000 people and the highest per capita income in the United States. Today Detroit is below 900,000 people (the first major American city to drop below a million) and ranks 62nd in per capita income. Half the housing stock in Detroit is unneeded. Imagine what that does to the value of the rest of the housing supply. You cannot have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down. You cannot create a welfare state for rich investors. WELL SAID. Newt has been excellent about staying non-partisan the last few years. Here are four immediate steps we can take: Eliminate the "mark to market" accounting provision which is driving companies into bankruptcy unnecessarily. . Repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley law which failed in every case this year and which burdens new companies with a $3 million-a-year accounting fee. . Join China and Singapore in eliminating the capital gains tax and watch money pour into the system from private investors at no cost to the taxpayer. . Pass a strong energy bill to return at least $500 billion a year in energy money to the United States. YES, YES ,YES!!! | ||
| Ducxl |
Big deal,whoopie-doo  So one guy is Radical Right wing and one is radical left. Your agenda negates your contribution | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
An interesting (yet unheard) perspective on the mortgage crisis. About Contact Archives RSS Columns Photos About Contact Archives RSS Columns Photos Michelle Malkin Lead StoryKill the bailout: Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess By Michelle Malkin • September 24, 2008 07:49 AM My syndicated column today tackles the bailout angle no one wants to talk about: Open borders and the home loan debacle. You’ve heard a lot about Fannie/Freddie and the minority lending shakedowns, but you haven’t heard most commentators/analysts on either the left or the right talk about the massive illegal alien mortgage racket — a topic I’ve reported on for the past five years. That’s because fault lies at the feet of the crime-enabling banking industry and the ethnic lobbyists and the illegal alien-enabling Bush administration. They screwed us. Now, they want us to fork over a trillion dollars. Screw them. Kill this bailout. And I second Mark Krikorian: Credit is not a civil right. It’s not a civil right for illegal aliens. For foreign banks. For American banks. For anyone. The bailout proposal, as I noted earlier, now includes student loans and auto loan debt. Will our tax dollars next cover foreign student loan debts? Illegal alien in-state discounted college tuition debt? Where and when will it end? Oh, but pardon me. I’m just being, you know, an ideological purist. *** Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2008 The Mother of All Bailouts has many fathers. As panicked politicians prepare to fork over a trillion dollars in taxpayer funding to rescue the financial industry, they’ve fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers, and minority home ownership mau-mauers (can’t call ‘em greedy, that would be racist) for blame. But there’s one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice: How illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks, and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis. It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave – Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure. Regional reports across the country have decried the subprime meltdown’s impact on illegal immigrant “victims.” A July report showed that in seven of the 10 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, Hispanics represented at least one-third of the population; in two of those areas – Merced and Salinas-Monterey, Calif. – Hispanics comprised half the population. The amnesty-promoting National Council of La Raza and its Development Fund have received millions in federal funds to “counsel” their constituents on obtaining mortgages with little to no money down; the group almost succeeded in attaching a $10 million earmark for itself in one of the housing bills past this spring. For the last five years, I’ve reported on the rapidly expanding illegal alien home loan racket. The top banks clamoring for their handouts as their profits plummet, led by Wachovia and Bank of America, launched aggressive campaigns to woo illegal alien homebuyers. The quasi-governmental Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority jumped in to guarantee home loans to illegal immigrants. The Washington Post noted, almost as an afterthought in a 2005 report: “Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing major ethnic or racial group, have been courted aggressively by real estate agents, mortgage brokers and programs for first-time buyers that offer help with closing costs. Ads proclaim: “Sin verificacion de ingresos ! Sin verificacion de documento !” — which loosely translates as, ‘Income tax forms are not required, nor are immigration papers.’” In addition, fraudsters have engaged in massive house-flipping rings using illegal aliens as straw buyers. Among many examples cited by the FBI: a conspiracy in Las Vegas involving a former Nevada First Residential Mortgage Company branch manager who directed loan officers and processors in the origination of 233 fraudulent Federal Housing Authority loans valued at over $25 million. The defrauders manufactured and submitted false employment and income documentation for borrowers; most were illegal immigrants from Mexico. To date, the FBI reported, “58 loans with a total value of $6.2 million have gone into default, with a loss to the Housing and Urban Development Department of over $1.9 million.” It’s the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to lax Bush administration-approved policies allowing illegal aliens to use “matricula consular cards” and taxpayer identification numbers to open bank accounts, more forms of mortgage fraud have burgeoned. Moneylenders still have no access to a verification system to check Social Security numbers before approving loans. In an interview about rampant illegal alien home loan fraud, a spokeswoman for the U.S. General Accounting Office told me five years ago: “[C]onsidering the size of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and other large cities throughout the United States known to be inundated with illegal aliens, I don’t think the federal government is willing to expose this problem for financial reasons as well as for fear of political repercussions.” Chickens coming home to roost. And law-abiding, responsible taxpayers are going to pay for it. | ||
| Court |
I'm not taking you to task for saying that but few folks here, who watched 3 friends hold hands while plummeting 94 stories to their death would agree. When your city gets attacked I promise to be more understanding. I am sitting the the library at Columbia writing and had to pass armed security (there are snipers on the roofs of the buildings across the street and gun ships in the Hudson River) to get in here. People in the world would like to kill lots of us. | ||
| Spatten1 |
Seems like those resources could have been put to much better use fighting Al Quaeda where they actually had operations. The Afghanistan operation is starving for US soldiers, Sudan and Somolia are over-run with terrorists. Then there is Syria, which holds the HQ for dozens of Mid-east terrorist groups. I'm not saying Sadaam was a good guy, and he did pay cash for any Jew killed by a Palestinian. However, the active terrorists were not in Iraq. Any intelligence people that told Bush and Rumsfield that were dismissed. Same story from nearly everyone that has left or been fired from the Bush administration in the last 5 years. Your opinion was only accepted if it was the same as theirs. Even McCain has lambasted Rummy and Bush for thier stubborness and arrogance. One Al Queda leader was hiding in Iraq, but I count at least 19 members that were here in the US, which does not make us a good target or a terrorist nation. Just saying that the bad guys were and are in Afghanistan and North Africa, and we used most of our resources in Iraq. Still haven't found that Bin Laden bastard. |
