Anyone watching/listening to the news?

[claud]

The bail-out may not be a good long-term solution but that was MY retirement that just went out the window. A coworker was planning on retiring this spring which will be impossible now unless the market comes back. It's not just the banks that are being punished.

 

[mtnhomechick]

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So far the FDIC has managed to Manage the problem by selling unscrupulous banks such as Country Wide, Wamu,Lehman, Bear Stearns and Wachovia to credible banks like BAC, JP Morgan and Citibank at NO cost to the taxpayer.

 

[mtnhomechick]

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Some are proposing putting that money to work to give the FDIC and SIPC the funds to " stand behind " the 401k.s 403b's to insure ALL savings from retirement plans, Money Market Funds, Money Market Accts. and savings of ANY kind.

Just not to bail out unscrupulous lenders and borrowers who just wanted to FLIP properties or didn't know they actually couldn't afford that house.

I don't want to see retirements lost.......I have one too. But this won't bring jobs back or solve this mess.

 

[The Chicken Lady]

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Just hop on over to The Easy Garden forums.

It's not as hard as you think to get better at gardening.

 

[Chicabee19]

I just talked to someone working at a local store. She lost all of her retirement investment today.

 

[mtnhomechick]

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I am VERY sorry to hear that. This is where I would like to see our government put some money. To insure retirements and savings.

 

[Wildsky]

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I heard that as well - fantastic idea, I don't need to be BAILED out, so why should I pay taxes and pay back that stupid kind of deal. Idiots. SEND ME a check.

 

[Buckaroo]

I think that was 297,000 per person, and close to 600,000 for married. I say give it to us, let us bail our selves out. If you end up broke, to bad so sad, I'll sell your broke butt a mutt roo for diner.

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[annmarie]

I just had my name added to a letter written by my Senator to the Treasury Secretary basically saying that if the wealthy banks need a bail-out, they should turn to the wealthy to bail them out, proposing a surtax on individuals that make over a half a million dollars, or couples that make over a million dollars, and leaving the middle class out of this mess. Here's the letter if you're interested in signing. I guess he has over 46,000 signatures so far, and it doesn't matter what state you're from.

http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/?petition=Financial_Crisis_1

 

[Rosalind]

Perhaps someone can explain to me why you think that the gov't standing passively by and letting banks fail willy-nilly -- banks that you and your employers have money in or loans from or would want to get loans from -- would a GOOD thing?

The thing is, there are multiple ways to do that, some of which do not in fact involve nearly as much taxpayer $$ or even any taxpayer $$ at all. The bill that just failed was not the only possible solution. The way IndyMac was seized and aggressively managed seems, for the past couple of months anyway, to have been a decent solution: figure out, one by one, which mortgages are the truly poisonous ones and which ones are crummy mortgages taken on by people who could manage their payments IF they had fixed interest rates. Note, a bank still makes money on a fixed interest rate, it just makes less. A chief executive cannot approve a fixed mortgage rate for a bank if s/he thinks s/he can get away with selling an adjustable one, as it is the executive's duty to make as much money for the bank as possible in the shortest amount of time possible--but a government regulator can make those decisions in the name of stabilizing the entire economy. So force the executives to eat crow on the nasty mortgages, forbid executive compensation over some amount for banks in such dire straits that they beg for taxpayer $$, and re-organize some crummy mortgages into fixed rates for homeowners. Cost to taxpayers == cost of coffee and donuts for Congresscritters. Heck, I'll buy the donuts myself.

Arranging for mergers or re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act that did not allow banks and insurance underwriters to merge for this exact reason in 1933 (i.e., repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) is also a low-cost solution to the taxpayer. There are probably a lot more options out there.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how and why these businesses operate on so much credit that one hiccup in their credit flow and they can't pay the electric bill. I asked a couple of finance executives I know if the profit margins truly are so thin, even at large banks like Morgan Stanley, and they said, yeah--the money all goes to payroll.​