The unprecedented move by the Treasury and the Fed today is

[WCGreen]

a blatant political move designed to hold off massive losses in the House and Senate.

Paulson came out today talking in generalities, refusing to take more than a few questions after he announced the Administrations "plan". The reason he didn't take questions was because they, meaning the White House, wanted to get out in front of the perceived problem without offering any details. The Treasury Secretary basically said here is what we are going to do and then put the ball straight in the hands of Congress.

This tells me they are giving up on McCain and are trying to maintain at least some GOP voice in the congress. What we will see in the next few days is the partisan bickering to commence as soon as the House and Senate are called to order. If this drags out without any specifics, the administration will claim it is all the democrats fault. They are standing in the way of the government from helping out the little people.

I feel it is far too late to do anything to help McCain. He is bumbling his way to a 42% popular vote. But they are going to try like hell to stop the potential bleeding this perceived crisis will bring down on the GOP by basically punting the mess into the democrats in congress.

This proves to me that the democrats are better as the party in power because they feel that the country is running well when the they are operating with hands on authority.

This also tells me that the GOP is much better at being an opposition party simply because their whole philosophy is wired into the word no. Unless of course voting yes will help out one of their supporters.

[jkshaw]

1. 3 1/2 more months of this ...

Gads!

[Skink]

2. The Swedes did this in the 90's.

committing 4 percent of GDP to a similar problem. In our case that would be 600 billion. AIG was the part of the ice berg we could see.

[WCGreen]

3. That's the problem...

People on Wall Street, the professional investors, are stunned that the government stepped in.

One comment was that this stops a recession. That's good, he said, but also bad since we don't have a chance to purge out the weak stocks....

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Blatant is certainly the word...

I'm a little surprised that these officials would do something this political...

Maybe I shouldn't be?

:wtf:

[abumbyanyothername]

5. What happened today is bad

What the system is trying to tell us is that paper assets are inherently untrustworthy.

The people who create, hold and trade the paper assets got scared shitless that there would be a run on the $4.5 TRILLION money-market funds after one of the oldest and most respected funds experienced an actual loss of principal ("broke the buck") because of losses on LEH debt.

But the system actually NEEDS for there to be a run on paper assets, because the paper economy has gotten outrageously large in comparison to the actual economy (perhaps 30-40 times as large?). The trading of paper assets back and forth is simply either a poker game (some players have positive edge, others negative but the net is zero sum) or a ponzi scheme (pay off early entrants with money sucked in from later entrants, until there are no more later entrants and the whole system collapses).

Long term economic security can only flow from converting labor into physical assets that are productive in ways that even a third-grader can understand. For example, we invest in agricultural land and methods that can be used to grow food that will feed us or we invest in energy production that is sustainable without the need for "fuel" inputs; e.g., wind, solar, tide, geothermal.

[WCGreen]

6. I agree with you up to a point...

But it is the intellectual labor, if you will, that needs to be considered.

Unfortunately, the people on Wall Street became enamored with their own cleverness and then sold people worried about jobs and the creation of hard assets being shifted out of this country a bill of goods.