Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueStreak
Okay, explain to me how "Doing nothing" would have been so much better?
How were the "bailouts" such a horrible failure? (You didn't see your stocks rise and unemployment level off after the second bailout was enacted?)
You don't think that "fear mongering" on behalf of BOTH parties has anything to do with the "uncertainty" I heard you bellyaching about?
Dave
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In no particular order.. FEARMONGERING?? Hell, the problem THIS WEEK is that the Republicans are complacency-mongering.. They are lying to the public about the consequences of running thru the debt ceiling. By telling folks that NOTHING'S gonna happen when the credit gets maxxed. No default, no Soc Sec prob... Only problem with that is -- they're not saying what WON'T be normal.. Like no FBI/Border Patrol/FAA/Tax Refunds, ect..
A virtual Libertarian Paradise eh?
And the DEMS don't call them on this because??? It would be fear-mongering? Or they are too busy conjuring up their own lies to even HEAR the soothing, calming MORONIC message from the right.
Each of the massive "fixes" was it's own animal. TARP was largely a blank check for the Treasury tax cheat to define. Congress had no freaking idea how it was gonna be implemented. The "urban legend" is that it was welfare for Wall Street. The truth is -- the banks didn't WANT IT... They had to be put in room and threatened with bad press to take the money. And then within WEEKS -- they started trying to pay it back --- and were ignored. It was SUPPOSED to suck up all those toxic assets and to this day -- nobody has measured the amount of the toxic spillage or suckage that occurred. But if you're looking for the confidence that act inspired in the market...
... it wasn't readily apparent on Wall Street. In fact, the market seemed to stabilize between the 1st failed vote on TARP and actually bombed after Bush signed it.. Coincidence? Or real panic caused by the anticipation of budget busting debt and search for the guilty? BTW: How much of TARP went to foreign entities? 1/2 of the banks benefitting from AIG bailout were foreign. Don't be under the impression that these bailouts and handouts were exclusively about Americans and American jobs..
Then you have the stimulus.. A TRULY mis-named heaping pile of everything BUT stimulus.. More than a 1/3 of that puppy was a body-blow to Soc Sec stability by using the only tax mechanism available to buy as many voters as possible.. And that was to give miniscule non-stimulating payroll rebates to every American. Kinda like the checks from G.W. but even more brazen.
And another large chunk was the long delayed repair of the AMTax where the govt was screwing large portions of the middle class for years and didn't care.
This was also NOT Stimulus, it was routine tax maintenance and spread out over 10 f'in years!!!! And neither were the "shovel-ready" give-aways to labor.. About the only useful part of that turd were the payments to the states to delay layoffs and defaults on pension plans. Which is NOW wearing off and will probably start happening within the next year..
ALL of this could've been done smarter, cheaper and with FAR less pandering and panic-mongering by both parties.. In fact -- what the banks were asking for (and by all accounts just as effective) was a temporary waiver of the accounting rules that REQUIRED THEM to use DAILY market value evaluations in their accounting. If they were allowed to project a VALUE onto those MBS that might reflect what they'd be worth AFTER the initial panic settled, the banks would have been able to pass stress testing. But with the Dodd-Frank rules -- they had to declare MOST of the MBS as completely worthless, even when it wasn't toxic at all..
No excuse for poor governance then -- No excuse now... These congress dont govern, they don't listen and they analyze.. They simply dish power to jerks like Bernake and Tax Cheat Geitner and call it a day...