Thursday, December 10, 2009
Giant Banks Are Trying to Make Bailouts Permanent. They'll Succeed Unless We Raise a Ruckus
According to the following Democratic and Republican congress members, economists, financial experts and journalists, the "too big to fails" (with help from bank-friendly voices in Congress) are trying to make the bailouts permanent:
- Congressman Brad Sherman, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, and was formerly an accountant, and other Democrats in Congress
- Congressman Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, and other Republicans in Congress
- Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker
- Senior Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron
- Peter Wallison, financial policy study analyst at the American Enterprise Institute
- Veteran financial writer William Greider
- Journalist Matt Taibbi
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In the legal world, precedent is as close to permanent as you can get. The precedent that has been set is complete government backing of companies that could cause severe harm should they fail.
ReplyDeleteSevere harm is entirely left to interpretation.
The corporate incentive is now a dash to the Too Big to Fail finish line, after which risk disappears.
What I'd really like to know is how anti-trust laws and Too Big to Fail can exist in the same legal universe. The two concepts will have to be reconciled at some point.
As I said at Naked Capitalism, maybe it's time for US liberals to emigrate while they can still get their assets out. New Zealand is nice, though a bit quiet. Historical precedents indicate Poland would be a poor choice.
ReplyDeleteA lot of blogging advocates think that by exercising their supposed -right of free speech- on the Internet, this very well removed and largely cordoned-off free-speech-zone made of ones, zeroes and urls, that by their efforts -they can have some effect upon the course of the tragedy of human events.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is far different.
Some days, it even looks like an altruist civic effect -is- occurring, -as there seems a growing uniformity of opinion based on persuasive evidence about a proper course, or a foregone conclusion about the truth of some seemingly important matter, a matter less trivial and -just perhaps- more important than the general malaise about the ongoing destruction of all our human values, potential and possibilities.
Sometimes we even appear to get what we wanted, much to our horror-nauseated -when we see what it is we wanted -turns out to be, or -what it so quickly turns into after-the-fact of our support for it.
The reality that the effects of human nature -as these relate to -greed and money- usually sets in -these being much more clinically persuasive than -reason, -science, -philosophy or -common sense, these greedy human nature effects -being much more the fat of the matter of human existence than any of the altruist notions we can day-dream about while our stomachs are full, and the glitter of gold isn't teasing our thoughts away from such fairy-thoughts.
And then all of us can only begin to fathom the irrepressible inertia of our human reality for ourselves. Where are we headed? For more of the same, is the best bet, -only worse still.
Schopenhauer, Sartre, Camus and many others gave good advice here for how it all turns out for us in the end -because our existence-strategies are so utterly insufficient and child-like -pragmatic-, whereupon we are bound to end up with no other choice than to somehow deliver the bullet into the brain that shackles us to our ascending madness.
That giddy feeling is not all it appears to be, Caesar.
The RSVP-invitation to the suicidal trap is that we think we can find a solution, -when there is none at this level of inspection.
If there is anything to be done about it, it is denying, and teaching the same denial, that any of these altruist motives is only really worth about as much as an ounce of the rat hair and the rat piss in the butter you so conveniently buy at the grocery store for putting on your toast every morning, -to start your day off right, and in a familiar manner.
Stop borrowing money. Force these immoral credit economy behemoths into non-survival mode. Withdraw your support of them, -completely. This will put an end to the TBTF banks.
And throwing off the shackles will also liberate your own potential.
From a low of 25 cents, CIT Group (CIT) emerged from bankruptcy aided by government money and aid of all sorts.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/finance?client=news&q=cit
And it is now trading at $28.12 per share, spiking virtually instantaneously.
But the country doesn't tax the windfall profits of the insiders who were tipped this sort of thing was going to happen?
And in the mean time, the country sinks ever deeper into depression.
Does anyone wonder why?
You won't change anything with your 'ruckus'. No one is listening. The legalized crime syndicate is in power. Zionism is the order of the day and the death of the dollar is on the horizon.
ReplyDeleteIf they (the banks) get one more bailout, there's going to be a revoultion Patrick Henry style in the United States.
ReplyDeleteI agree, they won't get away with making the bailouts permanent.
ReplyDeleteThe federal government is on track to collapse within the decade anyway, so it's all a moot point.
We need to now turn our attention to local and regional issues. The world is changing. Local and regional is where our focus needs to remain as we create a new civilization in the wake of the collapse of industrial civilization.
simple solution........
ReplyDeletestop putting money in the banks. the less money they have in their valts the less power they have.
stop using your credit cards. they are the reason we are in this mess of money from nothing anyway . the idia of credit is a scam to make you pay more for what you dont need.
lastly... stop voting blind. know who you are voting for , their reasons for running for office, and so on. do not vote because of party alignments . not all polititians are this or that and most are only out for them self.