Just one question before my "Representatives" sell me out AGAIN:

[dbt]

How do y'all figure that the motherfuckers on Wall Street who MADE this mess don't already HAVE enough money?

Anxiously Yours,
Raped, Bleeding and Abandoned in Arkansas

[sandnsea]

1. This isn't about any motherfucker on Wall Street

It's about banks that are broke. The banks. Not the motherfuckers running the banks.

[dbt]

2. Well, then, who broke the banks? n/t

[sandnsea]

4. What difference does it make now?

It's like refusing to help someone who was robbed because you're pissed at the robber. If the robber took all the money out of the bank, and the insurance company is broke, the community has to come together and figure out how to fix the problem. That's life. It sucks sometimes.

[Two Americas]

13. what difference does it make?

We don't want to give more power and money to those who caused the problem, that is what difference it makes.

Would we say what difference does it make who has been terrorizing the town, and then deputize the very gangsters who have been creating the mayhem in order to "solve the problem?"

When chickens are disappearing, you don't give the fox the keys to the hen house so he can protect the chickens.

[Two Americas]

14. I like that hen house analogy

The fox comes to you and says "uh, hey, you know those chickens you gave me to like watch over for you? Well, I have bad news. They are missing. In fact they are all gone. These things happen, what can you do? Chickens just disappear and then people starve. So why don't you give me a whole bunch more chickens? You don't want to starve, do you? We gotta take care of this right away. Just grab your neighbor's chickens or buy some on credit, whatever. We need a lot of chickens and we need them right now, or there will be a terrible famine."

The gangster analogy is good, too. Some gangsters tear up the town and terrorize everyone and then come to the city council and say "hey it is a big mess out there. A few more days of this and the whole town will be gone. How about you put me and the boys on the payroll, and give us guns and badges - big guns, we will need really big guns - and complete freedom to do whatever we want - we need that, because you know, the problem is really bad. You do want to save the town, didn't you?"

That is exactly how the Bush administration acts, again and again. Create a huge mess, or tell us there is a huge mess, scare the shit out of us, and the demand some sport of rush "solution" that always makes the problem worse and puts more money and power into their hands.

This is some sort of problem for psychologists to work out or something. Why do people keep caving in to the bullies, and fall for the same tricks again and again? It is some sort of sick pattern. Is it that people are traumatized and that is making them irrational? Some sort of moth to the flame thing?

[JDPriestly]

17. Please post this separately. Start your own thread with this.

You are absolutely right.

[Two Americas]

20. thanks JD

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4109699

[JDPriestly]

16. Are you prepared to help ordinary Americans when their

liquidity is wiped out by doctors' bills? How about helping ordinary Americans when their small businesses fail? Wall Street banks and investment houses cheated and wasted their money (our money). Why should we help them but not help the little guys when they get in the same boat?

This bail-out is like a consolidation loan. It will delay the misery. You have to get to the root causes to make a real difference.

[Hugin]

3. Banks aren't people.

Every uninsured school child knows that.

[pnwmom]

6. Banks are full of deposits that belong to real people.

And banks are the source of credit that real people need in order to do business -- credit that has all but dried up.

[Hugin]

10. Investment banks don't have depositors.

Every uninsured school child knows that.

[pnwmom]

12. Ever hear of WaMu? Investment banks aren't the only banks affected by

the current financial crisis. Anyone who's been following the news knows that.

Here's some more info, in case you want to educate yourself.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12321761

SNIP

After markets closed on Thursday September 25th, regulators seized Seattle-based Washington Mutual, the country’s largest savings and loan institution, and cobbled together a deal to sell most of its operations to JPMorgan Chase. It gives the crisis another unwanted record: WaMu has more than $300 billion in assets. The previous largest failure, Continental Illinois, had $40 billion-worth when it toppled in 1984.

It is particularly worrying that no other bank was willing to buy WaMu until it went under. This will fuel fears that the books of commercial banks, stuffed with fast-deteriorating mortgages, car loans, credit-card debt and loans for construction, are more rotten than feared. Even more alarming, WaMu’s demise shows that depositors will flee the most troubled banks, even when their money is backed by the state.

WaMu had been struggling for months. Reckless expansion during the housing boom saddled it with more than $50 billion in option adjustable-rate mortgages, among the most likely to explode when markets turned.

SNIP

Some economists think that commercial-bank losses could potentially dwarf those of the savings and loan institutions in the 1980s, especially if America enters a deep recession. Banks came into this crisis with what seemed like plenty of capital, at least in comparison with previous crises, but it is being eroded. By one estimate, almost a fifth of all commercial banks in America no longer meet the 6% ratio to risk-weighted assets considered safe by regulators. As a percentage of duff loans, their loan-loss reserves are at the lowest point for 15 years.

SNIP

[Two Americas]

15. of course there is a dire emergency

That is not the issue.

[pnwmom]

22. Many people here disagree with you on that. n/t

[Two Americas]

23. I have not seen one

I have rarely seen such unanimity on any issue. Everyone thinks there is a crisis. Some think that the crisis calls for propping back up free market libertarianism, others think that it calls for overthrowing it once and for all.

Pro-market versus pro-worker. Pro-Labor versus pro-capital. The political right versus the political left.

Which side of the argument people are on all depends upon which "we" they are most concerned with.

[pnwmom]

24. There are a lot of people who think this is a Chicken Little story,

("the sky is falling, the sky is falling") just like the mushroom cloud threats that preceded the Iraq war.

[Two Americas]

25. ah, I see

Well they are right. But just as with the Iraq war, we will never know will we? - and after all it is a disaster there now. No doubt there are bad guys out there who want to get us, but that doesn't justify invading Iraq. And no doubt money was not flowing, and that is a danger to all of us, but that doesn't justify giving the people who caused the problem more money and power.

So, yes, it is exactly like the mushroom cloud stuff.

Just because the emergency is a con job, that does not mean that we are not in trouble, nor that the free marketeers have not in fact wrecked the economy for all of us.

It all depends upon whether or not you see the economy as being the people - with some assistance and support from the bankers and financial people - or if you see it as the playground of the finance people with all of us being controlled by it.

As I said, the political left versus the political right.

[Hugin]

26. "Reckless expansion during the housing boom" Sounds like poor management to me...

I'll cry for them later. Right now I'm worried about sick uninsured people. That's more of a Crisis in my eyes.

Are you willing to explain to a dying person who 'doesn't want to be a burden' why poor Management deserves $3,000.00
of their taxes?

I'm not.

This whole thing is a scam to draw the Ron Paul Libertarian split-offs back into McCain's arms.

[girl gone mad]

19. Then we issue bonds and give credit to credit-worthy businesses.

No need to keep propping up the corrupt, bloated, greedy middle-men who caused this mess.

[truedelphi]

29. People think that this mess only hurt the banks or

Hurt the stock market.

But as a struggling business woman, first family and friends said, io cannot invest in your company because
A) the dot com thing-ee is offering me sky high returns
2) the hosuing market is offering me sky high returns
3) the stock market is offering me 11% a year - you only offer 4.5

Now all of those people ar e hurting.

But think of how many people (like me) needed to have their solid business supported by personal loans. These little businesses are here in the USA and employing Americans here in the USA and propping up local busineesses. But the HYPE of the fianncial bubbles and Wall Street make this money unavailable to normal little business people.

Perhaps this is because everyone in America wants to be involved in HYPE -- pure and utter HYPE!!

I have even had friends refuse to help me, then go out and use ten to a hundred times the amount of money that would have helped me for six months - hand that kind of cash over to a Ponzi scheme - "Well I had to do it - it was offering me a 19% return!! - and then they cry on mY shoulder when their money evaporates.

[western mass]

5. Um, No....

There are people who profit and lose based on what happens to those banks. The same motherfuckers who brought us this financial disaster are the same ones about to be given a gigantic taxpayer handout.

Sure, some of that handout will trickle down to the masses. Gotta love trickle down economics.

[scarletwoman]

7. Trickle down! It's raining MONEY! Woo hoo! We're SAVED!

Dontcha love it? :eyes:

[Jamastiene]

11. aka piss on the poor and middle class. n/t

[truedelphi]

9. Thank you for setting the record straight.

The people who created the problem are the heads of the banking industry. They will see most of the money that is handed out.

And I doubt any of us will see anything trickling down, unless one of the banking elite is walking their dog in our neighborhood, and the dog pees on our foot.

But in just a few short days, Bush will be signing this bill. And with one swoop of his pen, I am betting that our social security will be bankrupted (in all senses of the word.)

Should I be wrong about this, and we don't go bankrupt, on account of this bill, we will find out early next year that there are still over 514 Trillion dollars in derivatives that have gone broke. With our economy in a good year recording 13 trillion dollars worth of GNP, there is gonna be hell to pay.

And all for made up money.

[JDPriestly]

18. I think that as a condition of any bailout all traders, managers,

CEOs and board members and shareholders of these institutions should be required to allow leaders of Congress to audit their personal holdings -- everything -- overseas, here, everywhere.

The money went somewhere. It's in the possession of the very people holding the American taxpayers' deposits in ransom until still more money is forked over.

This is highway robbery by a gang of rich people. That is all it is.

[cornermouse]

21. Can we include the Bush and Cheney family fortunes in the audit?

[truedelphi]

27. Notice how they only tell us Bit by Bit that there is JUST This

One aspect of our economy in trouble.

The Corporate Elite's whole cover story is "Just this ONE TIME please let us hand over some of your money. Just this one time."

First they wiped out the monies in the Treasury. Since August 2007, over 750 Billion (perhaps as much as 900 Billion) has been snatched out of the Federal holdings represented by our Treasury and FDIC.

Now despite that particular bailout, they need an additional LET ME REPEAT additional seven hundred seventy Billion

From us the TAXPAYERS.

[LaurenG]

30. Are they (the mother fuckers running the banks) being allowed to keep their $$$.

If they walk away with more money than god, how fair is that, while we pay their broken banks back for 50 years. We didn't break it, they did, through mismanagement and greed. I wish there were a way to take everything they own, and set it up so that they can never work in the financial field again.

[truedelphi]

35. Are you familiar with Wanda Sykes? The Comedian? She was hilarious

On Jay Leno last week -s aying, well if we bail them out with OUR tax money, then theya re welfare clients, and I wanna see them living in the projects, and when we send them a check, I wanna see them lining up at the PAycheck cashing company and getting fingerprinted, etc

I can't make it sound as funny - maybe the piece she did on Leno is on YouTube. The two of you would totally agree.

[TBF]

32. This is absolutely about the MFs on wall street and the ones in

Congress who are aiding and abetting. This is about looting at the very top of our income scale, and the people who allowed and encouraged it to happen. These MF's belong in jail, along with any aiding & abetting Congressional Representative who vote for this theft by the elite. Welcome to class warfare, and you are on the wrong side.

[Lint Head]

8. There are enough golden parachutes to bail out wall street.

We just have to look up and catch them when they fall. :dem:

[truedelphi]

28. My sentiments exactly n/t

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

31. K & R. Four words, folks...

...WE. ARE. BEING. CONNED.

and if we want to add a fifth we could append the word AGAIN.

[TBF]

33. They'll never have enough, as they prove over and over again, as they

rob us blind. Just.say.no.bailout. Let them melt.

[autorank]

34. You're far to kind to them k*r

This is the betrayal of an entire nation.