well if you fuck up you have the option to declare bankruptcy and wipe out your unsecured debts. yes. you can even protect your home with certain types of bankruptcy, and in that case the lenders have to eat the loss. of course they always make money in the end becaue they generally work their losses into the interest rate.

the 700 billion is not in american taxpayer money-- it's not like we have the reserves. it's 700 billion in TAXPAYER DEBT. guess we could blow our creditors off in the future, ha ha ha.

by the way, they haven't reached a deal yet. just on some basic principles, as specified by Nancy Pelosi in that article I linked:

"Pelosi said Bush has agreed in principle to four basic conditions for the bailout package: strict oversight, curbs on executive pay, help for homeowners and an equity position for taxpayers in the companies that accept public funds. "

==

now, mind you, these are not 700 billion in the water, there is a value to those assets we'd be stuck with, except that nobody knows what their value is. ultimately, those homes being repossessed will have some kind of value and could be sold as a profit, not like Palin's airplane where they lost money. it may not even be $700 billion, in the end.

what's important though is that the financial crisis doesnt further extend to the real economy & we start losing more & more jobs. cos when businesses crash, real people suffer.

Ahah

but there is NO FINANCIAL CRISIS

It is a mortgage lending crisis, which in all actuality affects the lenders who made bad loans (fuck them, they chose to do so) and the fucking IDIOTS who accepted loans they could never pay (FUCK THEM TOOO, that is free market right? you suffer the consequences.

I own a house. I have a 30 yr fixed mortgage that I worked very hard to get, I can afford my payments even though I am stretched thin some months. There are MILLIONS like me who will benefit nothing from this, who will see fucking LOSERS and IDIOTS benefit from their LOSER IDIOT mistakes.

yes there is a financial crisis. it works this way:

used to be that banks would hold the mortgages & charge you for them. that was heavily regulated.

the problem is that the mortgages were turned into securities that could be sold or bought beyond the original issuing bank.

because the risk was now spread rather than concentrated in the lender, lenders felt compelled to make risky loans. and of course sell them int he market.

those risky loans were bought up by all kinds of people and financial institutions and flooding the markets with, basically, a river of shit.

and the civilians buying those securities, which were practically untraceable because of the complex math behind it (think: rube goldberg), and because of the "booming" housing market, thought the shit was actually good. people saw high returns in their portfolios, retirement accounts, pension funds, etc.

then-- surprise!-- it's all shit! our assets are worthless. all the chains of promises to repay monies based on prior promises becomes tainted. suddently the real value of what you had is made evident: it's worthless.

but it doesn't end there with people saying "oh fuck, it lost money". it gets worse, and it's when a financial crisis becomes an economic crisis. it works kinda like this:

because of the worthlessness of financial assets, people start pulling out of the market. so there is no money to lend. and so there is no money to operate businesses. so businesses shrink. GM for example just got out of the car leasing business. that means less cars produced, less workers paid, less people spending money, less money for businesses, & the spiral continues and you end up with a nuked economy. every imort & every export, for example, require banks to back up the transactions-- otherwise, there is no guarantee that when your shipment arrives you'llg et the money. all that is credit.

it's a bit fucked up but the economy depends on the exchange of goods and services and when the means of those exchanges collapse, it all collapses regardless on the availability of real goods and services. basically what happens is that people have no faith in being paid. for me, every time i issue an invoice to a client, it requires an act of faith-- i even spend money in advance of their paying up. conversely, when a client pays me a deposit, it's an act of faith on their part that i will do the work and not run away with the money or go broke before im finished. without that trust, it's very hard to do any kind of business.

t's pretty fucking complicated and i apologize for my primitive explanation, but macroeconomics is not an easy science.

it is a fgood explanation, but it does not address their calls to URGENTLY rush through legislation, like the whole thing will crash and burj in the next few days. that is BULLSHIT.
and the legislation will not FIX what caused this, just shore it up like a new orlean's levee wall, cheap in quality and expensive in cost.

the fear mongering is to prevent americans from seeing the real truth, that they are being forced to mortgage their children and grandchildren;'s futures on a bill which will FIX NOTHING and just plug a finger in a dyke.

But they were reselling the original dollar of debt 80 times.

Then this junk was used as collateral for more loans. To buy more junk.

It was a legal Ponzi scheme, so long as the value of housing kept going up, all was ok. But there was too much speculation by fucking flippers, who just walked away once they realized they wouldn't make any money.

Supposedly the derivatives are next and will dwarf the housing/mortgage problem. The executives and officers of these companies responsible should be sued and lose all their possessions in exchange for the taxpayers keeping the companies going. Its just an evolution of fascism, where the State serves industry.

The rethuglicans and their fascist lapdogs are trying to make this out to be a 9/11-type crisis so that like the Patriot Act, Congress will bend over and go yes yes yes right now like they did with the Patriot Act!

i thought it was 30 times, but yes.

the issue however is not to save the people who walked away, or any of that crap.

the issue is to keep the money flowing through the economy so that it can keep running. if i send my rent check and my bank runs out of money to pay it, i'm in shit. if your employer's bank goes through the same, you're not getting a paycheck on friday. this is serious shit. i'm not offering any solutions, but what i'm saying is that because of the interconnectedness of the economy, well all go down the toilet at the same time.



yes. very likely. and mcsame claims to be busy "saving the economy".

I don't normally watch Letterman (or much else besides No Reservations), but they were playing his top10 list on CNN as I walked by a tv. pretty fucking hilarious.

McCain can eat a bag of dicks.

by the way guys, I'm not going to be able to post for awhile. I forgot that I was supposed to save the world.

They are about to make investment companies into actual BANKS, capable of powers that they have always dreamed of, and should never ever have. that is the BIGGEST issue man.

actually no, banks are heavily regulated, unlike investment banks were. its the lack of regulation on investment banks that fueled this shit.

they are about to allow UNREGULATED investment firms to operate as banks man!!!!!!!!!

what? no-- where did you read that?

saw it too (the letterman broadcast last night)

wondering if that other thread (the one about south america) is the best tesla's got.

find another altogether more pressing story (another scoop entirely) in yesterday's news
at
http://www.metafilter.com
you'll figure it out
(well, at least part of the way)

this makes my head hurt. i say we go back to the hot girls thread.

Or at least What are you wearning?

When things get bad, go shopping. Buy clothes. Fuel the economy!

My wife's having a "women only" party in our house tonight. I'm up in the bonus room. 90 percent of these gals is pretty damned attractive.

I should go hit them up for some hot girl shots, but I'm too shy.

Ha ha, no, it's some "product" party, like Southern Living, or some shit. My wife gets a bunch of froofie things for the house, little lamps and shit like that, for hosting a party where supposedly people look at catalogs and buy shit.

But honestly all I'm hearing is a bunch of wild drunken women laughter. They are truly louder than when a bunch of men get together and drink! Seriously, it sounds wild down there! There's a lot of wine being consumed, I believe.

I think they are about 30 of them. Seriously, like 25 of them are fairly delicious looking. There's something about when women get together with each other, it's like they try to outdo each other in the appearance department. They are dressed in some pretty hot outfits.

Don't you piss off that man, no no no. 'Cos ya know...
the road to the White House runs through Dave.

salad fork

Baroque

dew

salutations and another view