Passed the house today by a pretty wide margin...about half the repubs voted yea.

Fish on...

Todd

[censored] [censored] [censored].. read the current version, its so full of bribes and pork its pathetic. I hope the senate nixes it or GW vetos it.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A sad day in American history.

They should have put in a line item to start impeachment proceedings. I doubt that Bush would read it before he signes it anyway.

The President is going to sign it today...he can't veto it, it's his proposal.

Fish on...

Todd

I've been trying my best to stay out of the political threads but I'm with Hankster on this one.

To be signed into law by a Republican.

So you were saying, SJ?

The bulk of what folks are calling pork are extensions of existing legislation, not new legislation. It would be interesting to see who put what item in.

The part I do like about the bill is that the .GOV has the ability to take an ownership interest in the "bad paper" out there. Why is this good? I'll tell you. They will be buying this so-called bad paper at a discount with their partners, then they will work our the underlying loans. Granted some of them have a lot of crap in them, but there will be some fundementally good deals in there, LTV wise, and even in a somewhat slow market they will be able to make some gains on sale.

Think of the money pool as a non-revolving line of credit. They get $250B to work with now, they buy some loans and once the money is borrowed, even if they pay it back they don't get to use it again. The line is paid back through the sales of loan bundles to the vultures. The vultures clean up, and so does .GOV in some cases, and both make some gains.

They "should see" what works well, and not so well, after the first go around, but we are dealing with .GOV, so they might not change processes as quickly as the private sector do. Then they'll repeat the process.

Companies involved with the RTC (resolution trust corp) after the savings & loan failures in the 80's made bank by working out this type of loan situation. I would venture a guess that this will happen again.

The best part of that bill is the FDIC insurance limits were hiked up to $250M from $100M per relationship. That's a good thing and limits the amount of structuring that we need to go through.

Not all is gloom and doom, and it should mitigate some of the fears of the general public somewhat.

Any way you slice it, it is pork. F... these bastards. They take 700bil and cant help but through a few pork projects in. What hte hell is wrong with our gov. Everyone of them that let this by should never get another vote and whoever.....which ever party......that put it in should be stood up in front of the capital and explain how their addition helped solve the current market problem. Then we should judge them on response followed by a good tar and feathering if not reasonable.

They all really do suck. They suck out loud, really loud. They all deserve the "round mouth of the day" award.

Yep.

The suckiest suckholes that ever sucked.

How'd Ron Paul vote?

So Dogfish, you seem the most banking-savvy bloke here -- who sets the discount on these purchases? How is a "fair" value established? I heard anecdotally that Paulson was trying to set a relatively high purchase price to help the institutions from going belly up.. At .30 on a dollar, it's a great deal. At .80 on the dollar we're getting raped. Who decides?


I'd also like to propose the "Irish Rogue" amendment to this all (future?) bailouts. For every $100M of bailouts we taxpayers fund, someone GOES TO PRISON FOR LIFE. The shareholders of the bailed-out company, minus employees/executives, get to vote for the person who does the duck-walk. This would instantly make the bailouts more appealing to the public, because people would be HELD ACCOUNTABLE for this mess.

Our economy is still losing jobs at six figure rates monthly, 90 year old ladies are shooting themselves as the sheriff knocks on her door to foreclose(although the govt run fannie did decide AFTER it hit the news to forgive her entire mortgage, that is something the govt can actually do now that might help), home prices continue to plunge, credit is still locked up and will be until 2009 imo, stock market is tanking, the rest of the world is a few months behind us in dealing with this clusterfook...etc

This bailout is bullshiat and doesnt address many of the fundamental issues. Im basically unemployed now but havent had to hit a food bank or apply for unemployment dollars yet but i sure have alot of sympathy for those that have already been pushed over the edge financially...cheers

Not sure who will set the price of the paper, but I do agree on the IR amendment. I would like to add my own amendment that would punish any media types who get any financial reporting incorrect and thereby induce panic in the general populace be drawn and quartered, then shot. Not necessarily in that order

As far as credit being locked up, in the past two weeks I've put out $5,000,000 in new money on the streets. This has been in the form of credit lines, construction loans, Commercial buidling refinances, a few consumer portfolio mortgages for my high profile clients, and such.

Most of the banking system, especially community banks, is alive and well. The media PHUCKS are the ones instilling panic over a few issues that are workable. Yes, there are a few financial institution in trouble, but we are still open for business.

Turn off your TV folks. The media is once again not your friend.

Give me your fax number, I'll send it to you that way.

Maybe we'll just spend the profit on another expensive and stupid war.

Anyone up for bombing North Korea? Iran?

Fish on...

Todd

Does Korea have any oil......

Wow, how awesome, Hankster. Nothing like saying you want to kill 65 million people in a public forum.

Sorry I trust bankers about as much as I trust lawyers and politicians. j/k