[Rhodes22-list] List Member Condones Criminal Activity ? Humor Political

[Brad Haslett]

Andrew,

Not sure if you're just trying to be cute and witty, or insightful, or
both, but we are "fellow travellers" for a bit whether we want to be
or not.

The address to the Congress last night is attached.  Things don't look good.

The AIG "bailout" is probably the least distasteful and the least
painful. "We the people" own 79% of the company and they have lots of
assets in their subsidiaries to sell. AIG is not insolvent, they are
illiquid. At an interest rate of 11% on their 85 Billion line of
credit (they actually haven't borrowed all that yet but we'll see)
they have an incentive to sell productive assets quickly.  There are
buyers, ie, Warren Buffet is buying up distressed companies as fast as
he can sign the papers.

Fannie and Freddie is a different story.  They were a bad idea to
begin with - a quasi public/government entity competing with the
private sector and we got the worst of both worlds, capitalized
profits and socialized losses.  We can discuss that more later, but
for now, follow the money.  Bad behavior and paid off politicians are
to blame for that one.

Bush started down the wrong path after 9/11 by bailing out the
airlines.  The auto companies will be next at the door holding their
bowl begging for alms.  At some point we have to say NO!

It looks like we dodged a bullet in the short term.

Brad

------------------------

September 20, 2008
Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — It was a room full of people who rarely hold their
tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the
potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before
congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence
at first.

Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an
urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were
gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi.

"When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator
Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman
of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday
morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional
leaders were told "that we're literally maybe days away from a
complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications
here at home and globally."

Mr. Schumer added, "History was sort of hanging over it, like this was
a moment."

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as "somber," Mr. Dodd cut in.
"Somber doesn't begin to justify the words," he said. "We have never
heard language like this."

"What you heard last evening," he added, "is one of those rare
moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and
Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly."

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to
repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson,
they said the two men described the financial system as effectively
bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

"You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the
economy, frozen." Mr. Schumer said. "That hasn't happened before. It's
a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing
you do know is you can't leave them frozen or the economy will just
head south at a rapid rate."

As he spoke, Mr. Schumer swooped his hand, to make the gesture of a
plummeting bird. "You know we'd be lucky ..." he said as his voice
trailed off. "Well, I'll leave it at that."

As officials at the Treasury Department raced on Friday to draft
legislative language for an ambitious plan for the government to buy
billions of dollars of illiquid debt from ailing American financial
institutions, legislators on Capitol Hill said they planned to work
through the weekend reviewing the proposal and making efforts to bring
a package of measures to the floor of the House and Senate by the end
of next week.

Lawmakers in both parties described the meeting in Ms. Pelosi's office
on Thursday night with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke as collaborative,
and that they were prepared to put politics aside to address the needs
of the American people.

While Democrats initially said after the meeting that they planned to
use the administration's proposal of a huge rescue effort to win
support for an economic stimulus package, they pulled back slightly on
Friday morning, saying that their top priority was to help put
together the bailout package and stabilize the economy.

But it was clear they continued to examine ways to make clear that the
government was stepping up not just to help the major financial firms
but also to protect the interests of American taxpayers and families
by safeguarding their pensions and college savings, and by preventing
any further drying up of consumer credit.

In addition to potential stimulus measures, which could include an
extension of unemployment benefits and spending on public
infrastructure projects, Democrats said they intended to consider
measures to help stem home foreclosures and stabilize real estate
values.

Among the potential steps Congress can take include approving
legislation to allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of primary
mortgages — authority that the bankruptcy laws do not currently allow
and that the banking industry has strenuously opposed.

But the Democrats said it was too soon to discuss such details, and
that they were awaiting a draft of the proposal from the Treasury
Department.

"We have got to deal with the foreclosure issue," Mr. Dodd said. "You
have got to stop that hemorrhaging..If you don't, the problem doesn't
go away. Ben Bernanke has said it over and over again. Hank Paulson
recognizes it. This problem began with bad lending practices. Those
are his words, not mine, and so this plan must address that or I'll be
back here in front of a bank of microphones at some point explaining
the next failure."

Even before the drafting of the plan was complete, the Bush
administration and the Fed began efforts to sell the idea of a huge
rescue to potentially skeptical rank-and-file members of Congress. Mr.
Paulson and Mr. Bernanke held a conference call with House Republicans
to explain their thinking.

Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the
Senate banking committee, said in a television interview that cost to
the government of purchasing bad debt could run to $1 trillion — a
potential warning sign since Mr. Shelby is a longtime skeptic of
government intervention in the private market.

Until Mr. Shelby was interviewed on Friday morning, officials on
Capitol Hill had been careful not to discuss specific figures, though
the rescue envisioned by the Treasury Department clearly entails a
government appropriation of hundreds of billions of dollars.


On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Andrew Collins
<sailingvesselcarmen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brad
>
> I heard that the moose was butchered and divvied up amongst the whole clan,
> and that the Palins got some too. And et it.
>
> I suppose it was then deep Sixed along the brown route (I am a non-flying
> type).
> But now that we are all socialists because all of us innocent tax payers are
> now fellow travellers in baling out (I am a sailing type) out Freddie,
> Fannie, AIG, among many others, shouldn't we start being even-handed about
> all this?
>
> Personally, all I want is my share of the $85 billion and some moose,
> preferrable nose, it is so tender.
>
> As to the socialisming of the investment bank industry, this sure looks like
> Europe to me, and as they say :
>
> well done, old chap!
> tres bien, mon vieux!
> gut gemacht, mein Alter!
> ben fatto, vecchietto!
> ben hecho, cabron! (poetic license)
>
> I could go on, but I gotta go ignore a subpoena 'cause I don't like the
> judge.
>
> If he didn't do anything why not show up?
>
> Andrew
> sv Carmen
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rob,
>>
>> Until Palin was picked as the VP candidate, the head of the
>> "Troopergate" investigation had remarked on several occasions that the
>> Palins had been cooperating fully and he hadn't needed subpoenas,
>> everyone was being open. Since her pick as VP, the process has been
>> politicized the Democratic investigator is using the investigation as
>> a means to harass and disrupt the Palin's schedule.
>>
>> Now what is "Troopergate"?  Sarah Palin's ex-brother-in-law is an
>> Alaskan State Trooper.  He threatened his father-in-laws (the Guv's
>> father's) life, he Tasered his 10 year-old stepson (in front of the
>> Guv's daughter), he drank in his patrol car, he shot a moose out of
>> season, the list goes on.  If I were the Guv you damn right I would
>> have fired him!  Except, he wasn't fired.  In fact, he's on record as
>> supporting Gov. Palin as the VP candidate.
>>
>> By all means, let the sun shine in on this one, it will only bolster
>> her case.  The issue is "did she use excess power in firing a
>> Commissioner to influence the firing of an Alaska State Trooper?  She
>> can fire anyone she wants to for any reason, say, she doesn't like the
>> way they comb their hair.  In this case, the supposed object of her
>> wrath still has a job.
>>
>> Abuse of power?  Keep fishing!
>>
>> Brad
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Lowe, Rob <rlowe at vt.edu> wrote:
>> > Ed,
>> > Is refusing to comply with a subpoena considered criminal activity? -
>> > rob
>> >
>> > http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghuS0L6TOT4wywVtT2dvpqJPilig
>> >
>> >
>> >
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