THE Bailout Thread pt 3 (merged)

[dohboi]

Better a bottle in fronta me...

Who's by-line was "Cogito ergo non satis bibivi" ("I think, therefore have have not had enough to drink yet")?

[cube]

...
Nobody ever really agrees with each other, and we all have different life experiences. Yours, are no more valid than anyones elses, regardless of how you see yourself.
...

oh really?
So everybody's opinion is equally valid you say...even Trolls, hypocrites, and Liars?
Now that is an interesting philosophy.

I have a different theory on life. I believe there are two types of people:
1) people who are worth talking to
2) and people who aren't

My time is important. I'd rather share it with people who have an *honest* intention to exchange information and not waste it on Trolls.
Reading several of your posts jasonraymondson *you* obviously do not have much to offer so you can now go on my ignore-list right alongside with RE.

waves goodbye

[UltraViciousBudgie]

Whoa! I was being a smartass in my post to make a point. Short of having a time machine and connections to those dispensing the government cheese I don't think my plan would work.

In all seriousness I do sometimes feel like a fool for not living beyond my means during the party years and crying for a bailout today. That's the message being sent by bailing out these fools. Worst thing is the fools are dragging the rest of us down with them and I didn't even get to party!

[MrBill]

Absolutely. The system is biased against savers in favor of risk takers. Biased against bond holders in favor of equity holders. Biased against prudent investors in favor of the reckless. Mostly biased against taxpayers in favor of failure. This is the result. And the bailouts are more of the same.

UPDATE: A bias egged-on by a Failure is Good mantra

Governments are having a problem arresting this deflationary downward spiral — maybe because this financial crisis combines four chemicals we have never seen combined to this degree before, and we don’t fully grasp how damaging their interactions have been, and may still be.

Those chemicals are: 1) massive leverage — by everyone from consumers who bought houses for nothing down to hedge funds that were betting $30 for every $1 they had in cash; 2) a world economy that is so much more intertwined than people realized, which is exemplified by British police departments that are financially strapped today because they put their savings in online Icelandic banks — to get a little better yield — that have gone bust; 3) globally intertwined financial instruments that are so complex that most of the C.E.O.’s dealing with them did not and do not understand how they work — especially on the downside; 4) a financial crisis that started in America with our toxic mortgages. When a crisis starts in Mexico or Thailand, we can protect ourselves; when it starts in America, no one can.

You put this much leverage together with this much global integration with this much complexity and start the crisis in America and you have a very explosive situation.

If you are going to fight a global financial panic like this, you have to go at it with overwhelming force — an overwhelming stimulus that gets people shopping again and an overwhelming recapitalization of the banking system that gets it lending again. I just hope the U.S. Treasury has enough money to do it. When you look at the way A.I.G. and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eating money, you start to wonder.

And that brings me back to Obama. We need a leader who can look the country in the eye and say clearly: “We have not seen this before. There are only two choices now, folks: doing everything we can to shore up banks and homeowners or risk a systemic meltdown.”

Yes, that may mean rescuing some bankers who don’t deserve rescuing, while also helping prudent bankers who were doing the right things. And, yes, that may mean rescuing reckless home buyers who never should have taken out mortgages and now can’t pay them back, while not aiding people who saved prudently and are still meeting their mortgage payments.

No, it’s not fair. But fairness is not on the menu anymore. We will deal with that later. Right now we need to throw everything we can at this problem to make sure this recession doesn’t spiral down into a depression. This is no time for half-measures.

source: Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

[Denny]

With all the talk about how the president could re-direct funds approved by Congress for a financial bailout to the auto industry, it leaves me wondering - is this not what would be literally termed "misapporpriation"?

Regardless of whether anybody feels the president's motives are justifiable, he is bound by the strings Congress has attached. Else, he would not be a president, he'd be an emperor.

It seems the press and the general public are turning a blind eye to this idea, but who is to say where the next arbitrary application of the bank bailout money could be. Lets say some of the President oil industry friends made some bad investments, he could bail them out too. Where would it end?

Its an odd mindset for a country that was founded on the battlecry, - "No taxation without representation!"

[3aidlillahi]

The volt was supposed to be the savior. What are they thinking? Let them die. Somebody else will make an electric car.

Exactly. If they don't have enough intelligence to make smart decisions now, then they won't have that ability if they get the bailout.

[shoblever]

That's great.
GM gfave up the Geo Metro, and Suzuki took over.

Suzuki will fill in the gaps when the unenlightened come apart.

[Plantagenet]

GM continues to build SUVs and pay UAW workers not to work, but says they won't build Chevy Volts.

GM isn't being stupid....this is a negotiating technique to get Bush to hurry up with their bailout money.

This method is standard procedure in both the corporate and academic worlds....smart managers always threaten to cut the best parts first when they know budget cuts are coming.....

[Plantagenet]

The Chevy Volt is "vaporware" anyway.

GM is waving the promise of this electric vehicle like a doggy treat to win support from the liberals and the environmentalists for their bailout, and the democrats in Congress and Bush in the White House are up on their hind legs BEGGING......I'm particularly tired of the unctuous Governor of Michigan who has been on every media outlet begging for the bailout. What an apalling harridan. It won't be long now until Bush gives GM a little bailout money to tide them over until Obama is in charge. Then Obama and the dems can be generous and provide more billions for GM and the UAW and leave the rest of us to pay the billions and billions for the promise of a treat.

[CarlosFerreira]

GM continues to build SUVs and pay UAW workers not to work, but says they won't build Chevy Volts.

GM isn't being stupid....this is a negotiating technique to get Bush to hurry up with their bailout money.

This method is standard procedure in both the corporate and academic worlds....smart managers always threaten to cut the best parts first when they know budget cuts are coming.....

Bingo!

+1

[mos6507]

Let them die. Somebody else will make an electric car.

The field is thinning rapidly.

Think! is on the Brink

[patience]

Ex-GM engineer here, who quit them in 1980 when I thought their management could not get any more stupid. Boy, was I wrong.

No, they won't reform their ways. All they know about problem solving is the same as Congress--throw money at it, and it will go away. Too late for that. IMHO, they are history.

[CarlosFerreira]

Chrysler's done for 2008.

Citing a credit crisis and dwindling sales, Chrysler LLC on Wednesday said it would shut down all of its manufacturing operations from the end of this week for at least a month.

The blanket shutdown marked a deepening of the financial crisis for the embattled U.S. auto industry and came as Chrysler and its larger rival General Motors Corp both seek to shore up cash as they seek a federal bailout they say they need to survive.

Chrysler, considered the weakest of the Detroit automakers, made the announcement on its plant shutdown in a letter sent on Wednesday to its employees, suppliers and the United Auto Workers union that was also posted on its website.

Will they open again? Taking bets from... now!

[TheDude]

Do you think GM is dumb enough to hope for the SUV market to turn around?

Not looking that way, latest news items are all about people crashing the things. I.E., "demand destruction."

They still serve as motorized housing, of course. Also serve as venues for Petroleus inflagratia: Police: PTA Mom Caught Half-Naked in SUV With Boy

[Snowrunner]

The thing that all the car makers and most people who want to bail them out have not understood yet is that cars are a luxury item. With dwindling (imaginary) personal wealth less and less people will buy a car.

Those who really need one (Suburbia) will not let go of their old clunker until the thing literally falls apart from under them.

There are simply too many cars being build, not only by the (formerly) Big Three but by everybody.

[shortonsense]

Carmaker says still aims to bring the electric car to market by 2010

The cash-strapped automaker is putting the breaks on the construction of a factory in Flint, Mich. set to make 1.4 liter engines for the Chevrolet Cruze and Chevy Volt plug-in electric car.

You know, I always figured the Volt was one of those things which would put a stake through the heart of peak oil, but I figured they would at least have to BUILD it before it would have an effect.

[mos6507]

You know, I always figured the Volt was one of those things which would put a stake through the heart of peak oil, but I figured they would at least have to BUILD it before it would have an effect.

I always felt that GM was in a race against time to get the Volt out there before Peak Oil caused a "receding horizon" effect that would prevent meaningful scale-out. So I made a mental note to treat the cancellation of the Volt or the fall of GM as a peak oil canary in the coal mine and a trigger to get to work on my DIY conversion instead. I never thought the credit crisis would bankrupt GM despite oil dropping back down into a comfort zone. If the credit crisis indirectly wipes out EV startups via cheap gas then when gas spikes up again we will be right where we were when the Volt project was announced--behind the curve and racing against time.

[dohboi]

I still think people are missing the point.

How would you feel if at this point Ben and Hank handed Madoff $100 billion because he was too big to fail?

That is what has already happened. The f'ers at Bear Stearns, AIG...were all corrupt, they set up the very sh*t hole that we have now all fallen into, AND WE ARE PAYING THEM TRILLIONS!

Even if we paid both Madoff and all his saps, it would not compare to the heinous payoffs already underway.

The rich have always managed to rip off the poor. Now they are ripping of each other a bit too, but the rest of us have already become their debt surfs. We will be paying for these bailouts/handouts to financial terrorists for the rest of our lives, our children's lives, their children's lives...

[ReverseEngineer]

The rich have always managed to rip off the poor. Now they are ripping of each other a bit too, but the rest of us have already become their debt surfs. We will be paying for these bailouts/handouts to financial terrorists for the rest of our lives, our children's lives, their children's lives...

No, it won't play out that way Dohboi. It might have played out that way if they could have contained the Cascade Failure, but its not containable. We won't be debt slaves to THIS monetary system at least. Nobody is ever going to pay off on $60T lost in the CDS market. There simply won't even be taxpayers to tax pretty soon, because individuals won;t have jobs and companies will be out of biz.

What we may be is slaves to the NEXT Goobermint that takes over, be it national, regional or local, but it won't be debt slaves, it would be the more traditional kind where you work at the point of a gun or are shot on the spot. It will be up to the individuals here whether they will willingly become slaves or whether they will fight before that happens, and many will certainly fight. On which side, who knows, but they will fight for sure. Which side will you stand on Dohboi? I know where I stand, I stand with Tom Joad.

Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there.

Reverse Engineer

[shakespear1]

Code: Select all

I wouldn't be so quick to assume his family were in on it. The whole thing blew up because his sons caught wind of it and turned him in.

I have a moderate amount of "tin foil" (well I think so) and am not willing to swallow this mush. Madoff n his one office operation managed to even fool his sons what he was doing!!!! Soare we to assume that he had his Quicken software running day in day out fixing the books as those checks were coming in. Mailing out profits to his "investors" every months and the sons noticed nothing.

You can run this scam when the market more or less is always on the upward trajectory, but a Depression Size bear market starts to clear out all the BS operations.

His was just that, a pure inside trader operation which they say on BBC had constant more or less ~10% returns!!!! Miracles do happen.

He ran a ponzi scheme. When times were tough he probable just looked for more "investors" to pay in and thus pay those waiting for the next months check. In the mean time waiting for the good times to return. Besides, he had inside info how to game the system as he was one of those that put this Monopoly Game together.

I think they better be careful how this one is played out as I suspect that if these investors are bailed out then the people siting in Detroit will not be happy. Greece could come to Detroit.

"Let them eat cake" moment.