Posted on

Should Tennessee Take Bailout Money?

That’s what Blue Collar Muse is asking.  Here’s my take..

If bailouts are bad, they are bad. If people think they are good, they are ok still bad.

But here’s the thing….if Tennessee (or any other state) were to refuse the bailout money, does that mean those dollars wouldn’t be invested spent in another state? Someone is going to be standing there with their hand out.

Wouldn’t we be better off to take the money and then, ahem, “invest” it for an interest in future revenues of another state? For instance, why not buy 1% of Georgia’s state income tax for the next 10 years, or a piece of California’s lottery action, a some of Florida’s sales tax?

I’m just thinking out loud here.  I’m sure what I’m proposing is either illegal or would be deemed so pretty quickly by an executive order–can’t have the States exercising this kind of power and making these types of decisions, right?

I know I’m wrong here…tell me why.

Posted on

Stupid Lending Coming Full Circle

I have to credit a buddy of mine in Chicago for bringing this one to my attention.

You’ve probably heard about the workers in Chicago staging a sit in at the Republic Windows and Doors plant. Their beef is that the company is not paying the workers enough notice before closing, which is a violation of their contract. That sucks for them, but somehow the government places blame with…

Bank of America?

Earlier Monday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, several alderman and Cook County officials offered their support for the workers’ protest and threatened to suspend business with Bank of America if a resolution was not reached.

How is it Bank of America’s fault that this company can’t run profitably?  Are they actually trying to coerce Bank of America to lend out money to a company that can’t repay it?

Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t most of this financial mess started when government forced financial institutions to lend money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back?

Posted on

$700B Well Spent

I’m not one to take a one day sampling of the stock market and make a “see-I-told-you-so” snap reaction.  It’s pretty unreasonable to think what happened in Congress on Friday would have much of an impact today–the assumption of the passage of the bailout was already priced into the market.  But the reaction to today’s drop is fast and furious, so I thought I’d join in with some snark.

Dow dips below 10,000—Maybe the market realized over the weekend that its new business partner is the US Federal Government?

Should the Fed cut interest rates?–That sounds like a good idea…let’s rig the system so that we can borrow our way out of this.  Why didn’t someone think of that before?

Global markets affected by the credit crisis–Duh.  Easy fix–just set up some sort of central banking system.  Better yet, let’s set up several.

The biggest irony of all–we continue to look to the people who cause problems to solve them and wonder why things don’t get better.  My favorite phrase is being thrown around by fear mongers is “uncertain economic times”.  When have we ever lived in certain economic times?

Posted on

Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta

Or a Senator.  Or an investment banker.  Some levity is needed.  I took the liberty of posting the censored version so you can be liberal with the volume at work.

All I gotta say to you wanna-be, gonna-be, bailout-backin’, pork-packin’ prankstas–when the Ѕңїτ jumps off what the ╒ủČК you gonna do?

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Posted on

You Don’t Want This Turd?

How about if I smear it all over something you do want?

Blue Collar Muse has the details on how the Senate is making an attempt to cram the bailout rescue down our throats (again) by attaching the bill to one that everyone is bound to vote for.

So they are trying another well known and highly effective tactic from the Congressional medical bag to revive the patient, attach the dead bill to a live bill that everyone likes and use the life force from the popular bill to revive the chances of the dead one.

I am a little amused that it seems like the most liberal and most conservative are coming down on the same side on this issue.  They may have different reasons, but the end result is the same.

Posted on

Mark To Market Clarification From the SEC

Before we start writing checks, can we give this a chance to work?

The SEC is not telling holders of hard-hit mortgage-backed securities that they can willy-nilly slap any value on them they want.

What the SEC is saying is: You can take other factors into account when valuing them.

Balance sheets should be changing.  Lots of smoke and mirrors, but no tax dollars.  I think that’s worth a shot.

Posted on

I Can’t Begin To Thank My Congressman

Because www.house.gov is slammed.  Here’s what I got when I tried to use their site to send my Congressman a thank you for voting against the bailout rescue savior of the economy.

Messaging Service Unavailable

The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of email traffic. The Write Your Representative function is therefore intermittantly available. While we realize communicating to your Members of Congress is critical, we suggest attempting to do so at a later time, when demand is not so high. System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience.

I’m sure it’s just a few computer savvy Ron Paul supporters who are causing all the problems.

Posted on

Interesting Thought on the Bailout

Read it, or we’ll be facing an insurmountable economic crisis.  Here’s a sampling.

Wall Streeters pat themselves on the back all the time for how creative they are financially.  So get creative here.  Create some sort of new entity and have banks contribute toxic mortgages into the entity in exchange for equity.  Find some pension funds to invest in the new entity at a deep discount.

HT Brad Warbiany

Posted on

Watching Some CNBC in Prime Time

Mark Cuban was talking about the need for transparency.  He also mentioned that one of the problems that allowed such a large drop today is that the short selling rules are keeping people from hedging their bets and keeping the markets honest.  A couple of nice soundbites too…

“Policians don’t want transparency because then they’re held accountable.”

“90% of Congress has no idea what they were asking questions about.”

Heh.

Some of us don’t want this bailout to pass because we don’t want a socialized financial system and hate corporate welfare.  Other people don’t want it to pass because, honestly, they don’t understand what’s going on.  Both are valid reasons in my book.  It’s crazy to ask people to foot a $700B bill when they don’t really understand exactly what the money is going for.

And if I hear one more person freaking out about their 401k…

Relax.  You aren’t retiring tomorrow, or next month, or next year.  If you are, chances are you’re in a heavy cash position anyway.  The rest of us are buyers, not a sellers.  Let’s be happy everything is on deep discount.

The rest of us should be more angry about the 10% penalty we have to pay to the gov’ment if we choose to withdraw our own money early.  The fact that the balance dropped 7% on one of the 11,000 days I’ll have the account as a buyer/holder and not a seller is nothing compared to that.