September 19, 2008

Here's Hank Paulson on wanting to gamble trillions more in US taxpayer dollars in an increasingly desperate attempt to stop the economic meltdown

So, let's recap:

1) Paulson's banker buddies recklessly gambled and enabled fraud in order to make obscene bonuses for themselves

2) Treasury, the SEC, the Fed, Bush and Congress, who were bribed by the bankers, did nothing. No fraudsters have been arrested. And the bankers kept their bonuses.

3) The bankers' bets went terribly, terribly bad


4) Paulson saves a few of the failing banks with the taxpayer's money


5) Home prices still crash, major companies still collapse


6) Paulson asks for hundreds of billions more in a wild and desperate attempt to stop the bleeding


7) The Fed gets the printing presses going


8) Your children hate you, and will come to hate you more.


Anyone else get the feeling the monkeys in government have completely lost control, and are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, just making it up as they go along now?


27 comments:

Anonymous said...

From NY Times:

>Paulson plans a "bold" program, to be addressed by Congress next week, to take over troubled mortgage assets. Bush called the intervention necessary, because he and Alan Greenspan had been such "dickheads".

>He continued "I'd like to choke that motherfucker with his metal of freedom. Damn that prick talks a good line of shit and I was dumb enough to believe him. Fuck me in the ass."

blogger said...

A few more things

* Moral Hazard?
* Precedent?
* Trust?
* Fairness?

Nah. Screw it.

I'm in disbelief. I predicted this, but I'm still in disbelief.

Anonymous said...

when is the rest of the world gonna tell us that we can can take our debt addicted society and go fuck ourselves?

Anonymous said...

All of my stock buys made after selloffs over the last few months, that that copy-and-paste guy mocked, are in the green right now. Especially the buys from two days ago! LOL

In other words, my "buying on dips" strategy seems to be working well! Of course I expect it to work even better over the long term. I will funnel FRNs in even if we go under 1K S&P.

But its nice having the PPT on my side, LOL. Anyways yeah, as for that dude, he sucks.

Anonymous said...

“These illiquid assets are clogging up our financial system, and undermining the strength of our otherwise sound financial institutions. As a result, Americans’ personal savings are threatened, and the ability of consumers and businesses to borrow and finance spending, investment, and job creation has been disrupted,” Paulson said.

If you have that much bad debt on your books, what exactly is the strength of the 'sound financial institution'?

Anonymous said...

Inflationistas have it right...1998 Russia here we come (might want to get some gardening skills if you haven't already).

Deflationistas...what were you thinking?
We don't have gold backing the dollar anymore, how in the h*** could you possibly have deflation with that kind of scenario.

THEY WILL PRINT THE MONEY!

THEY ARE D*** GOOD AT IT!

THEY HAVE HAD PLENTY OF PRACTICE!

THIS IS SOMETHING THEY TRULY KNOW HOW TO DO!

Prepare accordingly.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many shares of GS Hanky has in his blind trust?

Anonymous said...

so how will this plan work exactly? if the govt buys the bad loans, do they own the houses too? will the govt be selling houses to the public?

i'm asking because i simply don't know and not trying to be sarcastic or anything

Anonymous said...

It's a battle between the Great Unwind that the market wants and the arrogant (and foolish) SOB's that think they are powerful enough to stop it.

We all know who will be the last man standing.

GOLD.

Anonymous said...

This is a dark 2-day period for the US and capitalism. I am a free market/libertarian person and this makes me want to puke.

I hate paying taxes and wouldn't vote for Obama for dog catcher but, if he had the balls to propose a retroactive 100% tax on all bonus dollars paid out to anyone at Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Citi, Bear, Lehman, GS, MS, Merrill, JPM, etc. etc. for the last 8 years I will not only vote for him but stand on the corner holding a sign.

This is a disgrace of epic proportions. The worst part, it won't stop here. The usual suspects (Frank, Dodd and Schumer) are already talking about subsidizing every mortgage fraudster in the land... and, from their perspective, why not? If we can spend $1,000,000,000,000 to bail out Welfare Street why not every cheating citizen as well?

Does anyone know who supplies the paper and ink to the fed/treasury cause the printing presses are going to be running round the clock... I want to own those stocks.

Anonymous said...

Here is how it will play out. The government buys up all of the bad debt. Homeowners quit paying. The government ends up owning the houses, but takes years to figure out what it owns.

Can you imagine a congressman saying the government should reposess a few million homes and kick the homeowners out on the street? Not good for reelection. Homeowners get to buy their homes back for pennies on the dollar.

OR, the government sells the homes en masse to well-connected companies for next to nothing. Said companies then resell them at a huge markup, enabling the rich to profit yet again from the mess they created.

Anonymous said...

Paulson is an insane liar. The other option is to place the system into bankruptcy protection and write off the bad debt -derivatives-.

Anonymous said...

And here's the RONCO Rotisserie ad.
Stick a fork in it Hank, we're done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0NS44D7MYo

FlyingMonkeyWarrior said...

I get angry just looking at him.

Anonymous said...

"I'll take several questions"...

or just take three or four and then run the fuck outta here!

Anonymous said...

Can you say the "Baby Boomer Purge" will now begin?

Anonymous said...

Bye Bye Miss American Pie ,
I drove my chevy to the levy
but the levy was dry ...on and on


This will be the day that we die

I'm Talking America ,this is the day that America dies .

Farewell my fellow Americans ,its was good knowing you ,but now a new world order is upon us .

Anonymous said...

Hank couldn't allow his former company, Goldman Sachs, to go down. It's nice to be in a position to save your friends.

Anonymous said...

I feel a class action lawsuit coming on. I think the U.S. should sue Bush, Paulson, Bernanke and throw Cheney in there too(for the Iraq war). We need to sue them for several 100 billion dollars. Then, when they lose, they will need a bailout too which we probably will give them.

-FutureShock- said...

We are so screwed and we deserve it.

Anonymous said...

OK, we know that all this spin about public good of this bail out is bunk.
But for starters ,if we except Paulsons pleads that its for the public good to bail-out the toxic waste paper on the institutions books
than lets limit these bail-out to the actual institutions .

Only the banks on main street that the public deals with on a daily basis should get toxic paper bail-outs . After all this bail out is to save conventional institutions that serve a public function with banking etc.

The investment firms and hedge funds and unregulated funds should not be a part of this toxic loan relief . Let them sell in the open markets because their day to day function doesn't have very much bearing on main street .

So only institutions that were under the regulation of the Feds up to the anything goes bail-outs should be backed or relieved of
toxic loans for functioning .

consultant said...

"when is the rest of the world gonna tell us that we can can take our debt addicted society and go fuck ourselves?"

Oh you better believe that's working itself out right now. A few people are going to die. Some of that panic in the room comes from hearing about the "Jason Bournes" of the world out looking to complete contracts.

Money is fleeing here like rats off a sinking ship. But that's only part of problems. We are fucked.

I feel like all of us just stepped off into the Matrix. Unreal.

Anonymous said...

Never forget Y2K:"In other words, my "buying on dips" strategy seems to be working well! Of course I expect it to work even better over the long term. I will funnel FRNs in even if we go under 1K S&P."

Congrats. Rejoice now about your market timing, but rest assured capital gains taxes will go through the roof no matter who gets in office.

Between the whipsawing back and forth to cashing out, it will not be as easy as it was to make money in the stock market.

Anonymous said...

"All of my stock buys made after selloffs over the last few months, that that copy-and-paste guy mocked, are in the green right now. Especially the buys from two days ago! LOL

In other words, my "buying on dips" strategy seems to be working well! Of course I expect it to work even better over the long term. I will funnel FRNs in even if we go under 1K S&P.

But its nice having the PPT on my side, LOL. Anyways yeah, as for that dude, he sucks."

I could not agree more!!! I have been doing the same thing, and DAMN did it work today. Lets face it folks, our elected officials will eventually stop the bleeding because they have an UNLIMITED balance sheet. Sad but true. Human nature dictates that stocks will ALWAYS go up eventually. People like to make money, most on the long side. The shorts are like the bad kids in school. They make a good point sometimes, but eventually go too far and get squashed. Basically, what the guberment did this morning, and have done on many occasions is say - be a long, eventually you will get your money back, be a short, and we will CRUSH you. How many short hedge funds got CRUSHED and BLOWN OUT this morning in five minutes....a gap up for the entire S&P, I bet a lot!!!!

I made enough to day to buy a new car. Thanks Paulson....

Miss Goldbug said...

Anon said:"so how will this plan work exactly? if the govt buys the bad loans, do they own the houses too? will the govt be selling houses to the public?

i'm asking because i simply don't know and not trying to be sarcastic or anything."

Noted. In an indirect way the government does own these properties. I would agree with you.

I remember back in the 1970's here in the bay area, Caltrans bought up homes through Eminent Domain where they planned a freeway through upper Hayward, but eventually it was voted down. These houses were rentals until the government decided to sell them off about 10years ago.

I dont have a crystal ball, but its a possibilty all these forclosured homes will turn into public housing, and/or sold by the government.

This country's looking more and more like Russia every day.

Anonymous said...

Negligence:
Failure to exercise that amount of care that an ordinary, reasonable and prudent person would have excercised under same or similar circumstances.

I don't trust anyone anymore.

I guess I'll save some newspapers.
This will go in the drawer with JFK and 9/11.

Anonymous said...

"8) Your children hate you, and will come to hate you more."

Not mine .. I've lectured them for years about the evils of big government and the coming collapse. they may hate the U.S. leaders and many the many corrupt persons responsible, but not me. I (to steal a phrase from CSNY) "teach my children well".