Please just delete if you are not interested in this. In March of '08 when Bear Sterns was about to fail, Paulson and Bernake had secret weekend talks and CHANGED THE LAW so investment banks could borrow from the Fed. All public knowledge if you want to do the research. At the time, investment banks were not allowed to borrow because they were not subject to the same regulations as commercial banks. All banks that borrow from the Fed, pay insurance premiums into the FDIC and are subject to regulations and oversight. At the time all of this occurred in March, there were 6 major investment banks. The SEC was suppose to administer oversight. But no one really did for at least the last 7 years. As a matter of fact, yesterday (September 28, 2008) NBC reported the SEC ends voluntary oversight program for Wall St. Banks. Unbelievable. Also worth noting that the FBI is investigating all of them for fraud. I suspect they will come away with clean hands as no one really broke the law! Right? So as far as I can see, everything that is unfolding now with this bail out package has been in the works for quite a while. So all of the investment banks on Wall St. (since Bear Sterns bail out in March) seek refuge by merging into each other with the help of our tax payer money. Then this past week they change the status of the two remaining banks (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) into bank holding companies. I am sure they will somehow benefit in the future from the bail out. There is no such thing as Free Market Capitalism when there is a financial crisis. You can look at this article below (to perk your interest). If you wish to see the full damage of what they have done to us, go to Google and start searching. We have been duped and the rats are scurrying to leave the sinking ship. They will be waving goodbye to us as they leave Washington in January with big, big grins on their faces. http://www.law.yale.edu/intruders/6632.htm One other interesting thing you should know is that there is a list of 800 stocks that are not currently allowed to be shorted.
Shorting is a normal function of daily trading. There is no such thing as Free Market Capitalism??? This shorting ban is scheduled to be lifted on Oct. 2, 2008 unless they extend it from there due to our crisis. What will happen to those stocks and the Markets when the ban is lifted is anyones guess. Even GE made the list. They derive 50% of their profits from financial. Also worth note is the FDIC may find it necessary to request a 150 Billion dollar bail out as our regulated banks continue to fail next year. They have rented 5 additional floors in their Dallas office building for what's to come. Source Bloomberg. Fox is reporting today (Sunday) that over the weekend emergency in Washington, lobbists were circulating among our representatives. Like sharks on fresh bait you say. All of the corporations they represent want to be in on the deals so they can get their share of the 700 Billion. In my opinion, neither party in Washington has represent the "people" for years now. The financial advisors to McCain. Carly Fiarino, (recently ousted from his campaign because she said he could not run a company as she did) left Hewlitt Packard with a huge golden parachute. I do not think she had planned to leave at the time. While she worked there, HP stock dropped by $60. a share. I also heard her say as she outsourced jobs, these jobs don't belong to Americans. If I remember correctly, Phil Graham (once McCain's chief financial advisor, now working in the shadows) initiated the law to deregulate the investment banks in 1999. If I remember correctly Bill Clinton signed it into law. This removed regulations for investment banks to allow free wheeling and dealing in the markets without restraint. Phil is known for creating the Enron loophole. He is now in the shadows advising McCain because of the ongoing UBS scandal. He is alleged to have helped U.S. Billion-Aires avoid paying U.S. taxes by di verting their money to hidden accounts in Leichenstein. Check it out folks. All public knowledge. McCain is expected to appoint him as the Sec. of the Treasury. Obama has been financially advised by Robert Rubin, Warren Buffett, Robert Reich and other former Clinton advisors. All of this is very scary folks. Remember, Paulson in the 8 hours of testimony last week said that this bail out package was an idea to try to start to help the problem we faced. No one knows for sure if it will start to work to free up the credit markets and start the lending again as we have never faced anything like this before. 256 members of Congress and the Senate have received campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie had to be bailed out. China had 400 Billion invested and Russian had 80 Billion invested. Foreigners and sovereign wealth funds were also at risk. They have purchased a large portion of American companies as we continue our march toward globalization. Between '06 and '07 they alone have purchased 611Billion dollars worth of American companies. China's comment, when Fannie failed was, the US told us to watch them and we would learn how to make money, now the teacher has failed. Fannie and Freddie along with the lobbying firms on K street are also known as a place to work when you have finished with your Congressional job or are in between "jobs". So please be aware that what you are seeing and the sound bites you are hearing now is theater. Economists across the country have been e-mailing Washington for the last 4 days to say this current plan will not work. Don't think this is the end, it is just the beginning. Everything that I have stated here as knowledge is from information I have read, heard or discovered while doing daily stock market research for my own personal investing profits. I follow politics as it effects the stock markets. I cannot guarantee that what I have been led to believe is the truth for all. You don't want to get me started on AIG!

Interesting stuff, James. This dovetails nicely with the discussion we were having under the Palin thread.

A couple of points. Former Senator Phil Gramm (not Graham) is the man who McCain considers his economic guru. He and his wife were heavily involved in the Enron scandal (she was forced to pay a huge sum to settle an investor suit). A great article on Gramm and his wife Wendy is here.

But back to some of your points, the release of information in Liechtenstein was reported by ABC New's Brian Ross, but I can't find any subsequent information on the names that were revealed. Obviously, you've read something more current. Do you have a link?

What are your thoughts on UBS and Gramm/McCain's involvement with that? It is my understanding that they were one of the first foreign investors to be promised a part in this bailout.

I agree with you that this bailout is only the proverbial band-aid on a much larger problem. Will it stop the hemorrhaging?

James, thinking further about your post, I wonder if you aren't tapping into something a bit more sinister.

Are you familiar with Leo Strauss and his political teachings? He is considered the father of the neo-conservative movement. He taught political theory at the University of Chicago. Many conservative leaders today cite his teachings as inspirational, and many familiar names in our government studied under him.

University of Calgary political science professor Shadia B. Drury wrote, "Strauss's students and their students have occupied important positions in the Reagan and Bush administrations and continue to play a significant role within the Republican party. Prominent figures on the American political scene include Reagan's ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Wolfowitz; Caspar Weinberger's former speechwriter, Seth Cropsey; National Endowment for the Humanities Deputy Chairman, John T. Agresto; National Security Council advisor Carnes Lord; Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Alan Keyes; legal scholar and judge Robert Bork...; Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court; former Secretary of Education William Bennett; former Education Department Chief of Staff, William Kristol (later former vice-president Dan Quayle's chief of staff and then the chief pundit and policy maker of the Republican party). Journalists have been fully cognizant of this influx of Straussians into Washington and of the power they have within the Republican party. So much so that the New York Times has dubbed Leo Strauss the godfather of the Republican party's 1994 Contract With America."

If you delve into his political theories, you quickly see that he saw society broken down into three strata, the unwashed masses, the rulers and the elite few. If you are feeling that the bailout is leaving most of us behind, that is because we don't matter much. I personally am fascinated with Straussian theory. He painted a picture decades ago of the ideal leader, that picture was the personification of George W. Bush and, now, Sarah Palin.

Sounds like the money-raking Church system that flourished in Medieval/Renaissance Europe in my opinion. The Pope and his cronies heading that elite few [Napoleon bucked that trend I guess when he continually scoffed at the Church as being lesser elite than himself ].
Staussian theory = 'Retro-Con' movement perhaps....?

This was actually sent to me from a close friend i speak to daily,mostly about this very issue.it made alot of sense at 5 am this morning and thought id pass it on. we both hold the same opinions on this issue ,it is a band aid and we will be paying more iin the future. IMPO this is why our fore fathers believed a central bank was a mistake.

Well, now that the bill has failed (for now) and you are like me and have gotten out of the stock market, the question remains, where do you put your money besides under the mattress next to the shotgun??

I'm looking forward to some bargain-basement real estate that should be coming to a neighborhood near you soon.

Thoughts?

ive been marketing over seas ,i think with how cheap Real estate is now ,especially in florida ,buyers from all over the globe will be buying it up. im actually extremely worried ,if the economy gets worse the money you have in the mattress wont be worth anything.800 points in a day,wow!

Not saying this is my opinion but has anyone considered the 700 point drop a self fulfilling prophecy over hearing the bailout failed?
Anyone want to predict what will happen tomorrow.

I'm certainly not smart enough to figure anything about but I certainly think the gloom and doom that's been pounded at us for several years now has finally come home. After all they have predicted 35 of the last 4 recessions...

I just found it interesting because the DOW showed little movement after all the recent bank failures an the government takeover of Fannie an Freddie. Was the loss today more of a run on the market effect over the bill not passing. Don't get me wrong, I expect things to get bad, much worse than the 700 drop. The markets lost over a trillion dollars in value today, how much of a difference would the bill made when it initially only takes off 250 billion in bad dept. 250 billion sounds like a lot but in reality it's only a fraction of the bad dept which cause this problem.

Agree, I was moving to gold until gold went through the roof. Now it isn't so enticing...and I can't find anything enticing!!!

I agree that real estate will be a fire sale for foreign investors. Maine, like Florida, only has so much waterfront property and it will go fast!

Gold down 23 already. That's an encouraging sign, more so than the 200+ rise in the market IMHO.

Although the market looks unpredictable with wild swings up and wild swings down, the fact remains things are on the average swinging downwards weekly.

'Gamblers' may be grabbing bargains up when things are low for them to snatch up, but pretty soon these folks won't have the funds to pursue such ventures -as in the ripple effects of the chaos will soon start spreading to what they thought was their secure base.

Mainstreet will eventually suffer with banks holding off on giving out credit to those asking. From there you know how the ripple effects will have a domino affect on the market and plain citizens.

I heard $2 trillion in paper was lost recently in the markets directly due to the events of the last 2 days!
Compare that and the jobs being lost with $700 bil. 'bailout' installment/plan.
I also heard 10,000+ Wall st. jobs have vanished in the last few weeks - businesses in the area catering to such workers are laying off taff and losing $$$ bigtime.

I plan on protecting my money by investing in big bags of Marijuana.
It's proven to be a good money shelter in tough times.

seriously!

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

This is called the 401-Keg Plan

TERRIFIC POST!!!!

this coming from the same person as before,i found this interesting .



Scroll down to around paragraph 15 to read the Presidents remarks at HUD in 2002. This is a small excerpt from the White House release the same day as the speach. June 18, 2002.Betsy http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20020618-1.htmlWe are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well.

And so I want to, one, encourage you to do everything you can to work in a realistic, smart way to get this done. I repeat, we're here for a reason. And part of the reason is to make this dream extend everywhere.

I'm going to do my part by setting the goal, by reminding people of the goal, by heralding the goal, and by calling people into action, both the federal level, state level, local level, and in the private sector. (Applause.)

And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington? Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying. They may have the desire to buy, but they don't have the wherewithal to handle the down payment. We can deal with that. And so I've asked Congress to fully fund an American Dream down payment fund which will help a low-income family to qualify to buy, to buy. (Applause.)

Much more to read here folks.

http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm August 31, 2007 White House Press release regarding sub prime. Bush and Paulsonhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20070831-5.html October 15, 2002 Speach at George Washington University about minority home ownershiphttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20021015-7.html I have to leave now. You may want to google from 2002 thru today. If you remember the savings and loan debacle, you may want to google The Keating Five.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre48q2wi...ngress-funding/

I sure hope credit eases so people can actually buy the cars that Detroit produces...

Lol that's a great idea, you can forget about all these problems and enjoy a good return on your investment.

I wonder-when will the uptick rule be reinstated? Joe Kennedy, who new every trick in the book as a stock investor, wrote the rule book for FDR when Joe Sr. served as the first Chairman of the SEC. FDR was savvy enough to hire the fox to implement the federal government's effort to give Wall Street investors a level and fair playing field. Now, 70 years later, our cowboy prez and Chairman Cox decided the country didn't these

regulations any longer and it looks like 1929 all ver again.



JL

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_...meltdown_lehman

Dow down over 800 for the day.
As much as this will hurt, we can't borrow our way into a fix for our economic problems.

*cough*
whats ur phone # and how close are you to 7-11?

"Tim" you've got "Robert" all wrong...

He's invested in Brownies..

You see they call that a HARD INVESTMENT!.

Unlike you Puffers out there..

He dose'nt wish to have his investment go up in smoke..

Sorta like the U.S.Dollar has in the last few weeks...

Man I got the munchies now...

Hey ,Robert I got another wheelbarow of green backs for ya..



"T.M."

rehab names... lmao