The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: September 22, 2008

413 comments on DrumBeat: September 22, 2008

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NeverLNG on September 22, 2008 - 11:46am

I disagree, and find this a bit superficial

The visible part of said bailouts includes countless trillions sunk into vast tracts of enormous houses "owned" by thick-witted, semi-educated drones who never could have earned them in a billion years....

The short-term winners in the Ponzi scheme were the "drones" in the banks that pushed this poison, the media hacks who made their careers touting it, the real estate agents in every little town in America who seemed to grow rich beyond their wildest dreams (even though they may have failed at every other endeavor they tried in the past)... and so on.

Yeast makes flour and water bubble up real good -- but it will collapse unless you bake it.

Now we are about to bake the bubble.

Spengler over at ATimes has a great piece on why Congress is going along with this -- it is because USA is not a nation of sheep, but rather a nation of addicted gamblers: E pluribus hokum or
When the gamblers bail out the casino

Paulson's dreadful scheme will become law, because Americans love their bankers. The bankers enable their collective gambling habit. Think of America as a town with one casino, in which the only economic activity is gambling. Most people lose, but the casino keeps lending them more money to play. Eventually, of course, the casino must go bankrupt. At this point, the townspeople people vote to tax themselves in order to bail out the casino. Collectively, the gamblers cannot help but lose; individually they nonetheless hope to win their way out of the hole.

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ccpo on September 22, 2008 - 12:47pm

Thanks for that link.

Cheers

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rainsong on September 23, 2008 - 6:18am

Check out online reports of McCain being seen at the craps tables too many times.

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shargash on September 22, 2008 - 12:49pm

I especially like the end of the Article:

Where, oh where, is America's Vladimir Putin, who will drive out the oligarchs who have stolen the country's treasure and debased its currency?

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Durandal on September 22, 2008 - 3:35pm

Ron Paul lost in the Republican primary election.

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Cid Yama on September 22, 2008 - 3:50pm

The End of the United States of America

What is outrageous, is they are proposing to give the financial institutions the power to run their own bailout and TAX(because that's what it is) the taxpayer to cover the bill, while taking away the right of Congress or the Supreme Court to challenge their actions.

Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

We are talking the wholesale gutting of the Constitution, the end of the seperation of powers, the end of self-government for the American people.

We are facing taxation without representation(one of the causes of the American Revolution), and the subjegation, the enslavement of the American people for generations to come, to pay a debt they did not incure, while handing the ultimate power to a ruling class.

This is not a bailout, this is a coup. It is the overthrow of the United States Government and the enslavement of it's people.

The easiest way to defeat this coup is to just say no to the bailout and let them fall under the weight of their own debt.

Will that happen? No, because they have already purchased the representatives of the American people, who will sell us all for 30 pieces of silver.

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Ben on September 22, 2008 - 3:56pm

Sweet Jeebus, the whole country is about to get a Section 8. Lovely.

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Spaceman on September 22, 2008 - 11:42pm

If one takes your post seriously then the possibility arises that the whole subprime fiasco was a planned strategy, designed to precipitate exactly these events.

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karlof1 on September 23, 2008 - 2:31am

Close. The initial plan of heavilly shorting the ABX index used to calculate mark-to-market valuations for MBS and MBS-backed CDOs was done to enable the easy takover of numerous mortgage companies, whose own stock was mercilessly shorted though naked shorting and through the use of the Options Market Maker's own "legal" ability to naked short. What wasn't planned was the quickly cascading effect on the whole financial system, which was already stressed do to high energy and commodity prices, and war. That's the synopsis. Oh, and I should certainly mention the do nothing SEC, which could have stopped the whole process if it had enforced its already existing regulations; so, there was certainly indirect collusion. And I would be very remiss to not mention the financial press's role in this, too. Especially thestreet.com, marketwatch, and CNNmoney, with help from Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. I know all this very well because I was an investor involved up to my eyes in REITs from 2001-2007 as it all unfolded. As events unfolded and we debated and discussed at the Yahoo Finance message board for NFI, I was among the first to call these financial pirates Financial Terrorists, and they are deserving of a pirate's or terrorist's fate. They already got their money out of me; they ain't gettin' another penny.

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Geckolizard on September 22, 2008 - 3:57pm

Where, oh where, is America's Vladimir Putin, who will drive out the oligarchs who have stolen the country's treasure and debased its currency?

"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference." - Ralph Nader

Case in point: The last 7 days...

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july1406 on September 22, 2008 - 6:17pm

aaargh... This guy sometimes make so much sense its almost a crime. Will he concentrate his limited resources in states where a few votes could tip things to the Far Right yet again? If so, he's decided not to beat 'em but to join 'em in self-fulfilling prophecy land. The Right loves to wreck government using corporations and their cold money logic. Ralph loves to grandstand while watching them do it.

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