|
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 03/17/2008 : 17:45:52
|
Eliot's Mess
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort' $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer. |
So, really, I don't know enough to comment on this. Please read the article and let me know what you think…
|
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 19:28:31 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Kil
Eliot's Mess
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort' $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer. |
So, really, I don't know enough to comment on this. Please read the article and let me know what you think…
|
The conspiratorial tone is bad.
The story of Spitzer blowing the whistle is good, though.
Washington Post article
Linking it to his prostitution bust seems to be a conspiracy theory on the Vince Foster level. Rense picked up the story as well so that does not bode well.
Rense article
|
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
 |
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 20:32:38 [Permalink]
|
It seems the "intimate link" is that Spitzer, as a state prosecutor, had actually taken on the illegal and questionable practices of these banks, not that he'd been part of their misdeeds. Even whoremongers can be reformers. Spitzer seems to have been following a path blazed by many other NY State politicians, who got their first notoriety by busting crime. (Off hand, I think I recall that both Herbert Hoover and FDR were New Yorkers who followed this path.) But Eliot Spitzer wandered off the marked trail.
I don't have time right now to read much more.
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/17/2008 20:33:32 |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 20:52:58 [Permalink]
|
Comeon, people! Per the Trickle-Down Theory, Bernanke is effectively handing out big bags of tax-rebate cash! Get yours while you can!
Really, you can live in a mansion for three, four or even five years, but pay as if you're in a townhouse. Then you tell the bank you can't afford it, and work out a deal for another year or two before succumbing to foreclosure. So you rent a place you can't afford and live high on the hog for another three or four years, and then declare backruptcy. Then you suffer through three or four more years of living well within your means in order to build up your credit rating again and get the big black marks off your record... and then you do it all again.
Seven to ten years of living in luxury, paid for by being on a tight budget for maybe four years. And all the while Bernanke will be emptying the public coffers to try to make your life even better! Sounds like a deal to me.
Especially with Dems like Clinton trying to work out a plan where you can keep living in your house, even though you can't afford it. Bernanke is tossing out pocket change compared to her, but it's still worth collecting. Sunday was a small bag. I hear tomorrow he's going to toss out great big bags!
Unless, of course, you've got money in savings. You'll want to spend that tonight, to get the most value out of it. If your house is already stuffed to the rathers with crap purchased through Bernanke's largess, another outlet for your liquidity could be to help send Kil to TAM6 this year. Don't forget: you're not a patriot if you don't hand over your money to someone else, fast. Putting any of it away for a rainy day is killing the economy.
[/rant] |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 21:14:52 [Permalink]
|
They don't call him Helicopter Ben for nothing.
Dunno what good lowering the interest rates will do at this point. When was the last time you saw "Sold!" pasted onto a For Sale sign? There's a street in my neighborhood with 6 homes in a row for sale. Two have been empty almost a year and where I live is said to be the last holdout for the housing market.
There's obviously no relationship between the government's recent bailout and Spitzer's demise. I think it should be said that the bailout is legal although a bit unusual.
@
|
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
Sportsbettingacumen.com: The science of sports betting |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 21:31:37 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by @tomic
When was the last time you saw "Sold!" pasted onto a For Sale sign? |
Earlier this evening in front of my next-door-neighbor's home. The moving van was here yesterday, picking up their stuff. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2008 : 21:57:27 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by @tomic
Wow, I hope you showed you kid. That'll be something to tell the grandkids about. |
They won't be interested. By the time they can comprehend, people will simply be given homes by the government. Instead of "For Sale" and "Sold," the signs will read "Vacant" and "Occupied." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 07:07:24 [Permalink]
|
Oh, I forgot to mention that while living in your mansion, you need to maintain 0% equity in it. Otherwise, you won't be getting as much of a tax break every year as you could. So get a big, fat home equity line of credit, so that anything you accidentally pay off in principle on the mortgage you can immediately remove from equity and spend, spend, spend!
(And don't forget to spend those tax rebate checks in May. Buy yourself an extra computer or something, because you can't pay off old debts with them - that'd be almost treasonous.) |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 07:25:46 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by HalfMooner
It seems the "intimate link" is that Spitzer, as a state prosecutor, had actually taken on the illegal and questionable practices of these banks, not that he'd been part of their misdeeds. Even whoremongers can be reformers. Spitzer seems to have been following a path blazed by many other NY State politicians, who got their first notoriety by busting crime. (Off hand, I think I recall that both Herbert Hoover and FDR were New Yorkers who followed this path.) But Eliot Spitzer wandered off the marked trail.
I don't have time right now to read much more.
|
Grammar Nazi alert!
(apologies for my pet peeve)
the term -monger refers to a seller or broker of a particular item, so a pimp/madam would be a whoremonger, Spitzer is just a dirty adulterer. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
| Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 03/18/2008 07:27:22 |
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 07:56:44 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
Oh, I forgot to mention that while living in your mansion, you need to maintain 0% equity in it. Otherwise, you won't be getting as much of a tax break every year as you could. So get a big, fat home equity line of credit, so that anything you accidentally pay off in principle on the mortgage you can immediately remove from equity and spend, spend, spend!
(And don't forget to spend those tax rebate checks in May. Buy yourself an extra computer or something, because you can't pay off old debts with them - that'd be almost treasonous.)
|
I've just found out that if I file income tax, I too, will be elegible for this generous windfall. If indeed I get a check, I've decided to divide it between a fund for homeless veterans and the ACLU, with most going to the vets. With that simple act, I will have provided greater benefit to my country than the entire, stinking government has in 7+ years.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 08:35:40 [Permalink]
|
All in all, I doubt that this was a political hit. He put himself there, got caught and took himself out. But surely W and his banker friends were happy to be rid of Spitzer, the nuisance.
I hope that the states will continue to challenge those unfair lending practices with law suits for damages and such if they can, federal law being what it is. And I hope that someone will step up and lead them as Spitzer apparently did.
|
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 14:45:13 [Permalink]
|
Dave how depressingly true your rant is. My wife and I have had this conversation. In the early 90's we had this silly notion that we should become responsible adults/citizens by living within our means. We paid off $10K of credit card debt, bought a house we could easily afford, and have been saving 20-30% of our income for retirement. How stupid could we have been. All this time we could have been living high on the hog with periodic handouts from the government.
Maybe some of those being bailed out now or previously foreclosed on were victims of unfair lending practices, but I suspect many were just getting in over their heads due to a vision of a rosey future. Poor decisions just don't have the consequences they once did. |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 16:30:42 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by moakley
Dave how depressingly true your rant is. My wife and I have had this conversation. In the early 90's we had this silly notion that we should become responsible adults/citizens by living within our means. We paid off $10K of credit card debt, bought a house we could easily afford, and have been saving 20-30% of our income for retirement. How stupid could we have been. All this time we could have been living high on the hog with periodic handouts from the government.
Maybe some of those being bailed out now or previously foreclosed on were victims of unfair lending practices, but I suspect many were just getting in over their heads due to a vision of a rosey future. Poor decisions just don't have the consequences they once did.
|
You were wise to be frugal lest what happened to me hits you.
I became unable to work at all at age 60 but once I'd sold my (heavily mortgaged) tractor trailer, and a couple of other things of value, I had my debt within reason. I still had a couple of years of very tough sledding, and my retirement isn't what I'd pictured it would be, but now I'm free & clear, and SS & a modest veterans disability compensation (40%) is sufficient if not luxurious.
The government might be bailing the profligate and the foolish out, but I think it'll come back to haunt them -- unless, of course, the Republicans take over again.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
|
|
|
|
Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2008 : 19:14:08 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by moakley
Dave how depressingly true your rant is. My wife and I have had this conversation. In the early 90's we had this silly notion that we should become responsible adults/citizens by living within our means. We paid off $10K of credit card debt, bought a house we could easily afford, and have been saving 20-30% of our income for retirement. How stupid could we have been. All this time we could have been living high on the hog with periodic handouts from the government.
Maybe some of those being bailed out now or previously foreclosed on were victims of unfair lending practices, but I suspect many were just getting in over their heads due to a vision of a rosey future. Poor decisions just don't have the consequences they once did.
|
yeesh, didn't you see the S&L bailout of the Reagan Administration? |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
A political hit?
