Posted on 09/29/2008 3:17:03 AM PDT by SE Mom
On Friday, September 19, rank and file Republican members of Congress were notified of a conference call that would include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. I would never disclose confidences, but it is quite public now that we were told an economic disaster was about to take this country that could be worse than the crash of 1929.
Now, that’s a real attention-getter. It sure got mine.
My years as a judge force me to demand factual evidence to support expert opinions. The factual evidence was then and is now less than satisfactory. Yes, credit was becoming a real problem. Yes, there were major banks in trouble, but those were investment bankers, not the bedrock community bankers who for the most part have done fairly well since the 1980's about having better security for their loans. (It is also public record that I did outside counsel work back in the 80's for both the FDIC and the RTC, so I was familiar with problems then, and telltale signs of problems now.)
It was clear to Secretary Paulson that something had to be done immediately so that we could pass it on Monday or Tuesday at the latest to inject $700 billion into the banking system. That would be done by having the federal government purchase mortgage backed securities from the ailing big-boy-banks.
...
I’ve not been in Washington all that long but one adage I’ve learned is that, “No matter how cynical you get, it is never enough to catch up.”
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
I have no doubt his loyalties lie with Goldman Sachs.
Just heard Governor Corzine, forced out of Goldman Sachs by Paulson. (ironic, isn’t it) praising Paulson and insisting he has no vested interest in Goldman Sachs.
What a joke, this man’s entire severance of many millions of dollars is in GS stock.
That said, I understand that there is a crisis in the financial world. This may be the solution, but most of us are so cynical we don’t trust anyone to tell us the truth.
The example you cite isn’t part of the bailout. Yes a failed bank was briefly taken over by the Feds but then immediately sold to another bank and this wasn’t in any way, shape or form part of the bailout we are discussing.
So as odious and crazy as it is that this Fishman guy left with all this dough from a severance package when he’d only been there 3 weeks, what would you have the Fed government do about it? Write and pass even more legislation trying to regulate the pay of CEO’s? Get even more deeply involved in trying to control every aspect of what once was a thriving private economy, even with its warts?
I say no.
They have the perception because McCain has NOT said anything publicly, and let 0bama takes all the credit. He seemed to reject it at first, but now he seems to accept it. Nothing directly from him, though.
he needs to show leadership. take a clear stand. do the right thing
ping
Bookmark for later
Someone please explain to me - how will shares of sold assett go to the tax payer or worded by others, ‘when assets sold, the benefits will go to the tax payers’? Exactly how will the sold assets go to the tax payer? Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo gibberish vague talk to me.
Right on the money (no pun intended). The home prices were trending down to where they could be affordable without need of government programs and you can't have the market determine prices or we wouldn't need to rely on the government and hand over $$$ to folks like Paulson and Raines, etc. Something had to be done, and like a good little socialist-minded President, Bush went along.
You hit on one key. Who will govern to whom those assets are sold?
We can only hope the Democrats included off shore drilling ban in this bill, then it would be just perfect.
The real question is: How to prevent the banking system from collapsing without using my money.
I did not cause this yet I am being asked to pay for it.
Unless they are going to renegotiate every single mortgage in the country this is not going to save the banks. I would be willing to let my house go into foreclosure in order to get these benefits.
[If Speaker Pelosi gets 100 Republicans to vote for this (which as of this writing is supposed to happen today), then that allows the Democrats 60 vulnerable Members with lots of other Democrats who wish to vote against it and they will be able to survive in November. ]
This is what really ticks me off. Republicans are covering for Democrats. Boyda, D-KS is in a tough re-election campaign and has never met a liberal Democrat program she didn’t like. Guarantee, he will vote no and come home a hero. Makes me sick.
Excellent....
[All the reports I heard said that the meeting broke down with loud yelling and that McCain never really said much during the whole meeting. That is true, but what he did say was that the “...House Republicans are right on this one.”]
Ping!
Did anyone see Lindsay Grahamnesty on Fox News yesterday? I seriously almost threw up. “The important thing is that the House Reps are now on board and that is better for everyone politically.”
Politically?????
How about doing what is right for the country??
I don’t even know what my blood pressure is at this moment.
Screw that! If burning the house down is what it takes to get rid of the Rats, then so be it.
Important quote, SE Mom:
[quote] As the great Robert Novak reported in October 2007, “…the former Goldman Sachs CEO does not act or sound much like a conservative Republican to the GOP remnant at the Treasury. “It’s not in Hank Paulson’s DNA,” one official told me. Is he loyal to Bush? “Hank is for Hank,” he replied.” [snip]
“If Bush is so smart how come he’s falling for this? “
Bush is following typical good-management practice. Hire a competent person and trust them to do their job. Dont micromanage.
In a typical job, that’s fine, but here it can have drawbacks, if the hired hand walks away from the core principles of those who voted for you.
Hank Paulson is a competent person in charge of this arena. But Paulson is not really a conservative or Republican, he’s a Wall St guy.
The problem is, as noted, Bush is trusting a non-conservative with a wall-st-centric view to manage this crisis. What we got was a wall-st bailout that give Paulson all the authority.
Bush admin got burned over the Juctice Dept firings, and since then
The formerly ‘conservative Bush’ administration is not really conservative at this point. He’s been lame ducked into being an establishment figurehead of a govt whose non-conservative permanent bureaucracies have “won”, thanks to the Democrat Congress that would go after conservative ‘interference’ with the work of the liberal Democrats who staff these agencies. viz. the Justice department wasting many man-years to investigate the lawful and proper firing of US attorneys.
Its a neat trick, but the irony is that Obama’s ‘change’ will be less ‘change’ than McCain’s ‘reform’.
Ping for a must read.
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