Big Texas bank on verge of failure [Guaranty, $13.4B assets] [FDIC only has $1.8B left?!]

Fortune / CNN Money ^ | 2009-07-31

[mojitojoe]

KMA!!!!!!!!!! You go right ahead and trust them. As of January 20th 2009 I don’t trust anything the government has it’s grimy paws on. I trust the Constitution. They choose to wipe their ass with it, I don’t trust any of them.

[JasonC]

Correct. Now reason. Why do men want to scream whatever sounds scarier, and why are they willing to lie to do it?

And what on earth are they doing *here*?

On DU? Par for the course...

[JasonC]

You don't trust the constitution. You don't respect anything but your own power, and anything anyone else does, you sneer at. Meanwhile, do you know what you have ever done for me? Not a goddamn thing. But the United States has. It has created every drop of justice the world has seen in the lifetime of any man living, in blood and in sweat and in tears. And you --- haven't. You are simply resentfully attacking your benefactors.

[lainie]

Well, I’m not a man, or spreading false stories trying to incite class warfare. But I don’t believe the current American banking system is “utterly sound” at all. I don’t think they’ll go insolvent. I just laugh that they have the ability to print half a trillion dollars. This subject is related to, and affected by, Obama’s mismanagement and utter incompetence, but the same things could just as easily be happening if McCain had been elected.

So are you saying I’m disloyal and hate American civilization, too?

[AndyJackson]

If you don't want to print about $2T to save the institutions that are the source of finance and capital that have made America Great then you are a communist. Why I bet you really resent all the folks at Goldman Sachs who work their butts off trying to save our country. Why shouldn't they be paid enormous bonuses out of bailout money. Why not? Really. Do you know how hard they work? Do you know who smart you have to be to understand modern finance? You probably think that it is all a stupid mess. That is because you are dumb and don't work hard and just don't understand the rules of high finance where you make bets on bets on bets on mortgages where no one pays off a dime of principal expecting to get rich on appreciation.

And you just resent it. I'll say it again. You are nothing but a wealth hating communist. Now come on, let the really smart folks print a bunch of money and give it to other smart folks so America can be great again and just shut up. Please. It's for your own good.

[aposiopetic]

They are utter rogues and anyone giving them the time of day is pond scum.

Don't hold back: tell us what you really think.

[April Lexington]

A spokesman for the FDIC stresses that it has already set aside an additional $22 billion for failure-related costs in 2009, and adds that congressional action this spring gave the agency access to $500 billion in Treasury credit.

I remember yodeling about this in March. If the FDIC fails to make good on savings accounts, middle America is going to disappear. Gold in foreign safes is looking better by the day...

[April Lexington]

Two things. JasonC is one of the smarter brains on this forum. He seems to be a bit unhinged of late and THAT has me worried about the economy!

The second thing is this: the FDIC will not be allowed to fail for obvious political reasons. They can't middle America would be wiped out and Geithner will be walking the plank...BUT all of this Fed and Treasury money infusion is turning the dollar into crapola. The world is starting to look for different kinds of payment to preserve value. I've seen a contract recently where the non- US party wanted payment in something other than US Dollars. Too risky, given the relentless increase in money supply. When the music stops and everyone scrambles for the chairs, there won't be enough chairs. The smart money is getting out now. Before the music stops...

[April Lexington]

If you don't want to print about $2T to save the institutions that are the source of finance and capital that have made America Great then you are a communist. Why I bet you really resent all the folks at Goldman Sachs who work their butts off trying to save our country.

THIS is delusional! They are destroying the very value of the currency they are trying to save. And, in my opinion, Goldman is a bunch of opportunistic pirates who have assisted in the corruption of our Federal government to the point where our government no longer works and our currency is about to become worthless. Meanwhile, they have secured their wealth on a global level... We are the victims of a brilliantly executed financial rape...

Both communists AND capitalists are having their asses handed to them at the moment...

[April Lexington]

And isn’t it PATHETIC that the media STILL ignores it?

The media is no longer the Fourth Estate it is a propaganda shill for the Left. Remember the poet Allan Ginsberg? Harry old ..., well, anyway, he was fond of saying "Control the media, control the culture." I think he was quoting Lenin but the fact remains. They control the media. It is not free. It is not fair. It is not objective and it does not support the non-Left Wing...

[April Lexington]

JasonC... what you may be failing to realize is that the United States is dying as a free market engine. The productive class is being forced to fund the non-productive class to the point where all of that lump in the throat, Fourth of July crap is dying... We are entering a period of economic decline that, like the British Empire, may well be unstoppable. We are fighting here and in other forums to try to preserve what we thought was the deal. The battle will not be easy, as Reagan Revolution types like us (the free market people who made the system work for us and for our communities) are now in the minority. The Losers are in the majority and they don't give one rip for anything we talk about or feel strongly about. To them, we are a path to high fashion lifestyle.

If we lose this battle, I'll buy you a beer in Singapore...

[dalereed]

“Stop spreading irresponsible rumors and slander about important American institutions.”

What’s discusting is the existance of FDIC and the Federal Reserve!

[Centurion2000]

Stop spreading irresponsible rumors and slander about important American institutions.

Stop drinking the pro-government kool-aid; it's disgusting.

FDIC is broke.

[wafflehouse]

Two things. JasonC is one of the smarter brains on this forum. He seems to be a bit unhinged of late and THAT has me worried about the economy!

i have seen JasonC post good stuff in the past, but like you say, he has been "a bit off" lately. not sure what his deal is

The second thing is this: the FDIC will not be allowed to fail for obvious political reasons. They can't middle America would be wiped out and Geithner will be walking the plank...BUT all of this Fed and Treasury money infusion is turning the dollar into crapola. The world is starting to look for different kinds of payment to preserve value. I've seen a contract recently where the non- US party wanted payment in something other than US Dollars. Too risky, given the relentless increase in money supply. When the music stops and everyone scrambles for the chairs, there won't be enough chairs. The smart money is getting out now. Before the music stops...

If the FDIC fails, every bank in the US will fail due to immediate bank runs. the implications are far beyond just political.

Seeing people actually avoid the dollar is a Bad Sign! The Fed has done a good job keeping people guessing as far as inflation/deflation, but the data doesnt lie.

[JasonC]

Thank you. Nicest thing anyone has said about me all day...

[bmwcyle]

September is when it will all fall.

[JasonC]

The data says deflation. Producer prices are down 4.6% year over year, consumer prices are down 1.6%, commodity prices are down a staggering 38%. But the slanderers will not give it up, facts are irrelevant to them.

Nor is any of the above surprising in the least. Banks wrote off $1.8 trillion in bad debts and loan losses last year, the corporate paper market ran off another quarter of a trillion, as did the mortgage agencies. All the funds the Fed added to the banking system barely sufficed to keep consumer prices broadly stable, and if they had done nothing those prices would have collapsed 40%, just like houses, stocks, and commodities all collapsed.

The Fed's *job* is a deflationary smash is to *add money* to keep its *value* roughly unchanged - not its *quantity* unchanged. This is precisely what the Fed *failed* to do in the 30s and was rightly excoriated for by actual monetarist economists. Now with it doing the correct thing with the correct result, it is excoriated by men who *wanted* the smash to be *worse*, because they don't like the government or any of its institutions or present policies. They simply want to be *obeyed*, and if their pet policies are not enacted them they ritualistically predict disaster - and *want* it.

They are in this respect no different from the leftists who wanted to lose the war in Iraq because the other party voted for it. The disease is hyperpartisanship and its underlying cause is the inability to admit that politics is not the sum total of human life, combined with a strident demand for total obediance to this or that "canned" ideology.

Well, the world simply does not require your approval to live and adapt and grow.

You might attack several contemporary policies as harmful to the economy - raising taxes in a recession this steep is something no actual economist supports, only flaks; cap and trade is a ruinous and unmotivated attack on the sinews of industry; you can't make health care cost less by subsidizing it still more. But nobody does. Everyone instead attacks the Fed and Wall Street and everything Bush also supported. They attack the country and they prophesy doom, doom, doom.

They want doom. If they are not obeyed they want the country to die and be damned. Their ideas are not, in their own minds, an objective technocratic means to the good of the country; they are a political means - slogans and jargon - to obtain obediance to their demands and power for themselves.

A looter and a pol can wave any flag, even one first stitched by capitalists. By their doom mongering you will know them. Men only committed to seeking power for themselves believe that any deviation from their list of demands is damnable and spells doom. Men actually committed to the survival and the success of liberty believe in the survival and the success of liberty.

[JasonC]

There is nothing broke about the FDIC, but it is plain as a pikestaff that you wish it were. And it is clear enough why, too...

[Kowdawg]

September is when it will all fall.

Fall starts around the September 21st, every year.

[JasonC]

Wanna - bet?