

The best description of the fed bailout - myth_drannon
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/09/your-urgent-help-needed.html

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cturner
Have you noticed that one of the main results of this saving of things which
are "too big too fail" is a concentration of those big businesses into even
bigger business, a greater proportion of which are now too big to fail? The
rhetoric we had become used to hearing - that liquidity is subtle but very
important (which it is) has changed to language of protection and we see
policy responses to this. For example - the bans on non-naked shorting hits
the liquidity of the options market (because it's harder to do things like
hedging when you want to deal in options) and leads to further stagnation.

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vaksel
its not that big, should have pasted it:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a
transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the
Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for
large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in
this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil
Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury
in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American
banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe. This
is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as
quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of
our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family
lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who
will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred. Please reply with
all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of
your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we
may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that
information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that
will be used to protect the funds. Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury
Paulson

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
Yes, but the formatting is important. The screwed up line breaks are not an
accident!

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ckinnan
Here's another good one: <http://www.buymyshitpile.com/>

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swombat
Wow, an article about the bailout that's actually relevant to hackers ;-)

Good surprise.

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furiouslol
It would have been more convincing if everything is in CAPS.

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lemonysnicket
i am still laughing. that is the funniest thing i have read in a while

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LostInTheWoods
Errr, Americans seem to need somebody to blame for this crisis. But before we
lynch Bernake and Paulson, we should all take a good look in the mirror.

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chaostheory
umm have you actually seen the terms of the bailout that Paulson is trying to
sell?

the bailout “shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one
time.” - the key words are 'at any one time' meaning this is a blank check for
Paulson that he can just keep on drawing

It gets even better: "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"

so Paulson gets a blank check and we can't see what he's doing with our money
- awesome! sign me up

to top it off with icing: "The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as
the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act,
including, without limitation... designating financial institutions as
financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable
duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be
required of them;"

so totalitarian socialism replaces free market enterprise? o yeah what happens
to the dollar?

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LostInTheWoods
Who would you rather be in charge of the bailout? The President? Congress? ...
Ill put my trust in Paulson, he and Bernake seem to be the only ones who have
a clue as to what is going on and how to fix it.

~~~
aneesh
Definitely, Paulson knows more about this than Congress. But Paulson has the
perspective that comes with being a former Goldman Sachs CEO, so he might
(knowingly or unknowingly) be biased towards helping out the banks too much.

~~~
rbanffy
Not only that, but the lack of "checks and balances" in the whole deal is
shocking.

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time_management
This is a generational phenomenon. The housing-market racket of the late '90s
and early 2000s was a case of a large, dominant generation (Baby Boomers; b.
1943-58ish) enriching itself at the expense of a small, recessive generation
(Gen X; 1958-80). It occurred during a period when the Baby Boomers were
selling houses (that they inherited from parents, or that they were selling in
order to downscale to smaller, more maintainable dwellings), when young
families (Xers) were buying them, and when Millennials were (thankfully, from
my perspective) still renting. All of these bailouts, in my opinion, are the
same thing. Bush-style "conservatism" is clearly _not_ future-oriented, and
not very conservative either. Cutting taxes while starting a war? Come on.
It's a bunch of obnoxious Baby Boomers with no foresight plundering the
future.

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ntoshev
How does this contribute to your understanding of anything? Flagged.

