Anyone watching/listening to the news?

[joebryant]

Quote:
Well said!

 

[leslie]

A smart man once said. "If all the money in the world was equally divided between every person in the world, it would only be 3 months until the rich were rich and the poor were poor again".
The poor wait in line to give their money to the rich. The rich dont have to do much to get it given to them.
Ive seen this played out over and over.

I know an elderly couple who have been paying out one hundred dollars a month for a burial policy. They think they are going to have big time flamboyant funeral.
Why they would wnt to go out flamboyantly, i dont know, but I do know that the plans will not work as they think. '
If that money had been put into a fund of some kind, they would have money now to pay off their house.. which is in forclosure. They could afford heat, which the county pays for now.. and food, which the government pays for now.
makes me sick.
ten years of one hundred dollars a month.. i dont wnat to tax my mind at figuring out that....but she says if she drops it now.. then all that money will be lost. i say its lost now already.
I would donate my body to science before Id pay for a big funeral, in the first placae..but i doubt if she will be getting that big send off.
is there something wrong with me that I dont care for a big funeral and expensive box to be buried in???? id rather have a comfy bed now to sleep in.
whew!

 

[joebryant]

Simple math:
60 million families (55 million married couples + 5 million unmarried couples) 700 billion dollar bailout
700 billion divided by 60 million = ONLY $11,666 per family

Where are some of you people getting those astronomical amounts that could supposedly be distributed to all U.S. families?

EDIT: Some are saying $297,000 per married couple. SAY WHAT!

 

[Sugar Sand Farm]

Its bad enough that the government wants us to pay for their screwups but I was listening to the news here in Tallahassee last night and one of our former governors said the main reason this did not pass was that it gave the treasurer freedom to also bail out foreign banks. Now come on why should we pay for them its hard enough to stomach paying for our own. Dont the foreigners own enough of this country already. i vote NO NO NO

 

[mom'sfolly]

I think the bill was bad, but I think some sort of bailout is necessary. This has been coming for a while with all kinds of bad decisions along the way....the emphasis on getting low income families into loans, 100% mortgages, overinflated appraisals, selling mortgages on speculation, bundling mortgages as investments, housing bubbles, golden parachutes of executives who lose money, unregulated credit markets.....its a very looonnng list of not so good decisions. However, giving 3/4 of a trillion dollars of taxpayer money with little oversight and little expectation of taxpayer ownership is not right. At least during the savings and loan bailout, there was an expectation that if the assets ever gained value, the taxpayers would benefit as well. Bailing out AIG makes sense because they insure most of the mortgages; if they fail all the banks holding those loans also fail.....

Even here, the math doesn't seem to add up. The rumors that $700 billion is over $250,000 per family shows that people don't bother to check the math. We as consumers have to be savvy, as well. When we purchased our mortgage, we deliberately went with a company that doesn't sell its mortgages. We wanted to know who we would be dealing with long term.

Anyone still for privatizing social security? After all the market will bring you a better return and private industry can manage your money better.

 

[mtnhomechick]

And just think of all the Hedge Funds that made a fortune on this mess.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
It may sound like a bad plan to you when you realize that most of what stores stock -- and I don't mean just fashions and electronics and SUVs, I mean things like butter and flour and, uh, on this list I guess it does not make so much sense to use 'eggs' as an example <g>, and home heating oil, and prescription drugs, is bought on credit and transported by shipping companies for whom credit figures very importantly in their operation.

If you don't mind not being able to buy those things much/most of the time (and others not being able to buy them either), then fine

THe country is unfortunately just not in a position to go nearly cold-turkey onto a cash on the barrelhead basis.

I absolutely totally agree that this is not a good situation to have got ourselves into -- and I also totally agree that the bailout plan that congress nixed was not the very best way of doing it -- but I vigorously DISAGREE that no bailout is necessary.

It is not a matter of the gov't bailing out wall street, en masse or individual firms, at this point -- it is a matter of the gov't bailing out the entire economy on which we all depend. A great big flushing sound is going to take a LOT of people down with it, quite likely more (in my opinion) than a slower less drastic transition even if that involved a greater likelihood of severe inflation down the line...

JMO,

Pat

 

[Reinbeau]

Sorry, Pat, but I truly believe it's going to be a hard fall that's necessary here. We can't build anything on credit and have it last. Sure, the guys at the top benefit, and we can ride on their coat tails for awhile, but without solid underpinnings this is going to continue to happen again and again. I am fully aware of business methods, I was a Business Manager for years running a small, $5 million a year firm, doing all the accounting and tax preparations, paying payroll, etc. We did not, I repeat, did not use credit. We held our own AP, collected it, used it to pay within terms for products we distributed. It's hard work, but it was all ours. We were beholden to no one. I suppose the argument could be made that we could have been a $20M, or $30M firm with the use of credit. I (and my firm owner) couldn't live with that. We made enough to employ people and pay them a good wage. My boss was a multi-millionaire from a company he started in 1956. He retired a very rich man.

I am very conservative. Old fashioned, if that's what you want to believe. Moving us off of the gold standard was an enormous mistake. Thinking the system was functional on vaporware for money was another. Building a worldwide financial system on flimsy credit was the worst mistake. Do I want to go through another great depression? Of course not. But right now I don't think there's any avoiding it. Unfortunately this time I think it's going to be worldwide.

If only I believed we'd learn from these huge mistakes.

 

[BeardedChick]

We did not, I repeat, did not use credit. We held our own AP, collected it, used it to pay within terms for products we distributed.

DH runs his business the same way. What startup money they have borrowed was loaned by us - the owners (we loaned half, his partner loaned half). It was money we had saved before starting a business.

It's hard work, but it was all ours. We were beholden to no one. I suppose the argument could be made that we could have been a $20M, or $30M firm with the use of credit. I (and my firm owner) couldn't live with that.

The company is all ours, the risk was all ours. It is a hard way to build a company and it does grow more slowly. At one point we had the option to borrow a lot of $$$ and grow out much faster, but I do believe that we would be in a lot of trouble now if we had taken that route. Instead, we have a small economically sound company.

We made enough to employ people and pay them a good wage.

... and we can pay decent living wages. I wish we could buy full health insurance for our employees, but we haven't found a way to do it. Affordable plans are not readily available for small companies like ours.

I don't have the feeling that the government can manipulate the economy and know what the outcome and repercussions will be.​

 

[Eggzactly]

Can someone explain what this means to the little people?