Are Wall Street firms paying shills to post "Chicken Little" posts on DU and other liberal blogs?

[ddeclue]

so that they can panic us and separate us from our money?

I'd swear that's what's happening from all the gloom and doom, end of the world, four horsemen of the apocalypse, chicken little, sky faller posts I've seen here in the last few days.

NONE of them have established ANY real facts - they've ALL PRESUMED that there is a dire crisis and demanded that we panic for them.

Well that is presumption of facts that simply aren't in evidence here and it is a MAJOR FALLACY in their logic that we shouldn't be fooled by.

All we really have to go on are the unsubstantiated assertions of George W. Bush and Bushbots Paulson and Bernanke here.

We don't have any real information on the M numbers (money supply) since the gov't stopped publishing it 3 years ago.

We don't have any REAL access to the books of these companies or any REAL investigations into their ACTUAL state.

As I said, all we have are a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions.

You know like...

Global warming isn't real...

or

Sadam has WMD's...

or

Terrorist attacks are down...

All things we've heard from the Bush administration which has no compunction about altering the facts to protect the ideology. They've made up stuff repeatedly, hidden or censored contradictory facts whenever necessary to advance their agenda.

I've no reason to trust them, they've cried wolf and lied to me just too many times.

Personally I think we should:

1) Re-regulate banking and finance RIGHT AWAY

2) Investigate the crap out of these investment banks and their executives for 6 months to a year in Congress and in the courts.

3) Help those who have defaulted on their mortgages get caught up on their payments and force the banks to convert their loans to fixed rate mortgages at prime+3% or less.

4) Give those who got re-po'd on their subprime loans their money back.

5) If Wall Street investment banks are still hurting 6 months to a year from now AFTER all the above has been done and AFTER Obama is President and STILL tells me it's a problem THEN we'll help out these poor suffering fat cats... cause you know if the tables were turned they'd be the first to help US out... :sarcasm:

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. You can count on it

And add to that the people who are monitoring and whoring for the campaigns, the FBI and other governmental agencies and people who earn more than $250,000 who have tons of spare time to shill on the net.

[torbird]

34. Do you have a tinfoil hat for me, too?

[ddeclue]

38. What's your hat size?

:tinfoilhat: - say does this one fit?

:rofl:

[Cronus Protagonist]

104. Why?

So you can pretend you don't exist?

[polichick]

2. imo your ideas are excellent!

[Miss Chybil]

3. I'm with Obama.

He didn't fall for the war and stuff and I really don't have enough knowledge on the situation to make my own judgement. So, if Obama says we need a rescue bill, I'm going to trust him.

[polichick]

5. Obama caved on offshore drilling - not because he doesn't know it's a scam...

...but because not enough voters know it's a scam. He's a politician.

[Miss Chybil]

27. Well, I haven't seen him go out yet and try to convince people they NEED

offshore drilling. Big difference.

edited to add emphasis

[polichick]

29. That's true. Maybe he'll help them write a better bill. (I hope.)

[moodforaday]

41. That, and FISA. (nt)

[avaistheone1]

106. The FISA cave in really angers me.

[Greyhound]

46. I can see that, but remember that candidate Obama will have to do things that President Obama,

or Barack Obama would not do.

[bvar22]

112. You are going to trust the guy who is funded by Wall Street....

...when he tells you that Wall Street needs $700Billion of your children's dollars?

Financial industry big houses have contributed almost twice in funds to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in comparison to his Republican rival John McCain.


For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows...


"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The Daily News.

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/4517

Barack Obama rakes in millions from law firms serving the interests of Wall Street, including the financial institutions that gave us the subprime lending crisis.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=613&Itemid=1

A little too convenient to accept on blind trust.
Like the OP, I would like to see some documentation.

[Honeycombe8]

149. Give us the names of those who have all the answers, please. Don't keep secrets.

If not financial advisors and pundits. If not Warren Buffett. If not those in the financial business of various sorts...then who? Granted, their advice may not be totally reliable. But who else is there who really knows this stuff?

Buffett, BTW, has no reason to lie. He's a billionaire philanthropist who thrives on economic downswings. He says something needs to be done, or the country will spiral downward fast toward the depression era.

It's like global warming for those who aren't convinced global warming exists, despite the evidence given by most of the people in the climate biz. The thing is...the risk is so great if YOU are wrong, and THEY are right (and most of the evidence points to them being right).

[Hannah Bell]

162. His philanthropy enlarges his own empire & influence. Corporate

philanthropy is expressly designed to do so.

[Honeycombe8]

190. He's not a corporation. Would YOU give away 50 Billion dollars instead of leaving it to your family?

Best to know about something before giving an opinion.

[bvar22]

169. Indeed,. Something needs to be done.

But panic feeding Wall Street $700Billion of our childrsn's dollars without guarantees, equity, investigations, strong punative measures, and iron clad protections is is NOT the way to go. The Democrats have the majority, and The People are speaking.

Panic Bailing is futile unless the boat is fixed.
See Franklin & Teddy Roosevelt for a plan to fix the boat.
Then we can bail.

Politicians who tell you that they will 'Fix it later" are lying.
They are openly telling you that it is a BAD BILL, but they have other reasons for supporting it.
They told us the exact same thing about the Patriot Act.

We are in a downtrend.
The economy has been kept afloat for 8 years on Borrowed Money.
It was NOT sustainable.
The alarms have been sounding for years.
We may be headed for a depression, but this didn't happen in the last week.
This "Bailout" is a last minute Smash & Grab attempt by the looters before they lose the White House.

It won't FIX anything.

[Honeycombe8]

191. I agree with the "fix it" approach. But that's complicated and takes times, doesn't it?

You can't overhaul the financial system in a week.

I'm sickened over this pork-filled bill, though.

What I don't see....a strong leader in the Senate and in the House to take this bill by the horns.

I agree that this is a last minute grab. But what would happen to the average person if a rescue/bailout doesn't happen would be worse than the sting of being grabbed from.

I don't know what should be done. But I do trust Buffett. His history has shown that he gives honest opinions, railing about Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy like himself, etc. If he bought into Goldman Sachs for $5 Billion, and then warned that the country needed to do a rescue quickly, I tend to believe him. Sigh. This is beyond the level of all of us, really. This is top league high finance stuff that we average people don't understand (and don't have all the facts on, either).

[earth mom]

130. Get a clue-Obama has been paid MILLIONS by the financial institutions.

What else can you expect him to say? :eyes:

[jjanpundt]

4. Absolutely! n/t

[tavalon]

6. That's devisive

There are a lot of opinions floating around here. Just because it pisses you off doesn't mean they are paid shills.

[Uncle Joe]

8. It could be both, paid shills and true believers. n/t

[tavalon]

10. Sure,

but the people I've seen these last few days so entrenched in their diverse points of view have all been people I've seen here for years.

[Uncle Joe]

13. That's what I love about D.U., the diverse points of view.

I'm just wondering if the corporate media drumbeat is also having an effect?

[ddeclue]

24. Speaking of "paid $hills"... the M$M...n/t

[Truth2Tell]

117. corporate media drumbeat

I think THAT explains almost all of it. And the level it trickles down to DU is evidence of it's power, on this issue and many others.

[Uncle Joe]

22. P.S. I'm not suggesting there isn't a real economic crisis,

I'm just wondering if it's being magnified on purpose as a means for wealth redistribution?

[gatorboy]

25. I suppose we could all go out and try to get a loan.

[Uncle Joe]

30. Or do more shopping as Bush suggested, while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest

and waging a voluntary, premeditated, unnecessary, expensive war thereby exploding the debt, while the price of fuel rose at an average of 15% over the past eight years.

I'm just curious as to whether it was Bush's Base buying back in to the stock market?

[sendero]

53. Of course it is..

... after almost 8 years of the lies and propaganda, it astounds me that there are so many that still just don't get it.

Who would have thought that ANYONE here on DU would be taking their marching orders from George (fuck up everything I do) Bush and the Corporate Media.

I guess there are plenty of DUers who are able to be whipped into an irrational. trumped up fear just like the country was to get consent to start the Iraq war. The tactics of the promoters are the same, and the quality of the results will be also.

[Virginia Dare]

174. The dissenters could be both too...n/t

[Wetzelbill]

7. I usually trust a combo of Paul Krugman and Dennis Kucinich

and some of the more progressive voices in Congress. On economics I look at what people like Dean Baker and Robert Reich say too. If it's unclear then, well I sort of just put it all together and figute out what I think is best.

Right now, the bill that was turned down wasn't good, but it was better than nothing, imho. I don't think that's good enough. I think the Dems need to put together a bill that they would write and absolutely believe in and not be held hostage by the people who only believe in a radical economic ideology.

[aquart]

39. Right now, I still believe "better than nothing" is worse than nothing.

I think they all have bloody fucking nerve trying to sell that shit as brownies.

[Wetzelbill]

64. for me it's a bit tougher than that

because I see a few people I really respect who are for this thing, but my own instinct says "no way." It just doesn't feel right any way you put it. A bad deal.

[aquart]

98. Lotta people I respect are for it, including my sister.

But they have shown me NOTHING I can believe will positively affect this situation at all. I see a temporary rearrangement of the deck chairs, but the iceberg is still crunching the deck.

[Geek_Girl]

9. Your uneducated and obviously don't know what your talking about!

You'll rue the day that you didn't support this bail out. You'll loose your job. You want be able to use your credit card or debit card. Not too mention Sonic won't be able to sell you crappy junk food.

:sarcasm:

[KamaAina]

11. Or, could it be Satan, oops I mean McCain?

We know he's been paying people to spread disinformation on lefty sites for months now.

And we know how important this is to him: so much so that he was willing to chicken out of postpone the debate, and to twist the arms of, um, zero out of eight Arizona House reps to vote for the Bush/Paulson/McCain bailout. :P

[RoyGBiv]

12. Speaking of global warming ...

The people who flatly deny any crisis exists, themselves offering no facts and a heaping helping of inflammatory rhetoric about the personalities of those who are trying to explain the depth of that crisis, remind me an awful lot of those who deny global warming is real.

A great number of posters have given insightful commentary on the nature of what we face. The problem with much of it is that we are not entirely certain what all we do face and are certainly not aware of how bad it will get. Could it be Great Depression II? Possibly. Could it be a second viewing of the early 80s recession? Also possible. How long will it last? That, in part, depends on who the next administration is, who sits in Congress, and how the judiciary plays into anything that is or isn't done.

This message has not been approved by the Paid Corporate Shills Who Post on DU because They are Deluded into Thinking DU Actually Affects Economic Policy in some Substantive Way Committee. They sent me a check, but it bounced.

[ddeclue]

20. You mischaracterise my argument sir...

I asked you to provide EVIDENCE...

Instead of providing that evidence you accuse me of being a "flat earther" and go right into the fearmongering about Great Depression II...

You prove my case rather than disprove it with your fearmongering...

Thanks...

[gatorboy]

28. Soooo, you have no evidence as well?

It was so nice to meet you, Mrs. Palin. How's that Russian view? :rofl:

[ddeclue]

31. Doesn't work that way friend...

YOU are the one asking for 700 billion dollars from ME the taxpayer.

YOU are the one who is obligated to make the case, NOT I.

I am NOT swayed by assertions as I've seen it all before... remember the Iraq War and WMD's?

I do and I wasn't fooled then EITHER..

Sorry George Bush..or are you Henry Paulson...

:rofl:

Doug D.

[gatorboy]

33. Why doesn't it work that way?

Oh, because you don't have any substance to your argument.

You do Steve Doocy proud, Doogie. :)

[ddeclue]

36. No I DO have substance..

I am insisting on EVIDENCE.

You are refusing to provide it and demanding that I panic first and think later.

It's YOU who would make Steve Doocy and the FauxNews crowd proud, not I.

Doug D.

[gravity]

37. What evidence would change your mind?

Be specific

[ddeclue]

43. Actual books from the involved firms showing that they were

literally out of money to lend would be a start.

There's a difference between them refusing to loan and not having any money and nobody has proven that they are out of money yet.

Actually knowing what the M3 money supply in this country is would be nice but oh I forgot..the government refuses to publish that figure any more...not in 3 years...

A full blown investigation by Congress with testimony and subpoenaed records of these firms would just be a beginning of what's necessary to prove such a complex assertion.

On the other hand if you're right all we have to do is wait long enough. If the world does end first then I'll be convinced but so far it hasn't and the market has gone back up and regained almost half of yesterday's losses even without a bailout so it's hard to believe you at the moment.

Doug D.

[gravity]

61. Major banks are dropping like flies

That basically proves that they don't have money to lend

[ddeclue]

68. NO they AREN'T

A tiny handful have failed and been bought up by the market..

Doug D.

[RoyGBiv]

78. !!!

Oh, I get it. You live in a cave.

[gatorboy]

40. Doogie boy, I'm simply asking you how you know it's not getting worse.

Can you, or is the head in your ass thing going to persist? Because, it's kinda cool how you can do that!

[ddeclue]

51. Your argument is based in FEAR not FACTS.

I am an engineer and I deal in the world of facts and what I can prove and logically deduce, not what somebody asserts without proof.

You can run around claiming the sky is falling but you simply have no proof of that and it is preposterous to live your life in fear of what MIGHT happen...

For instance how do you know an asteroid might not strike Chicago tomorrow and obliterate the planet?

How do you know that the Canary Islands aren't going to slide into the sea and create 600 meter high waves that will wipe out every city on the eastern seaboard tomorrow?

How do you know that Yellowstone's supervolcano won't erupt tomorrow and obliterate 2/3's of the United States?

How do you know that the Russians won't mistake a missile drill for an incoming US attack tomorrow and launch a devastating retaliatory attack?

How do you know that a virus might not mutate tomorrow and kill everyone on the planet?

How do you know that the sun won't supernova tomorrow and vaporize the entire planet?

I could list endless doomsday scenarios for you my friend, many of them even plausible which you can't disprove but we shouldn't all freak out and go running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

This is exactly why I distrust people who engage in fearmongering based on assertions rather than facts and exactly why I demand evidence not assertions.

[RoyGBiv]

54. And countless economists ...

... and financiers who deal in the world of economics and finance have been shouting from the rooftops that we are in crisis, and if we don't do something about it, we're screwed. Indeed, we may be screwed anyway.

That's a fact.

[ddeclue]

58. Lots of economists actually DO NOT...

and many state that the cure will be worse than the "disease" leading to rampant inflation.

These systems are too non-linear, too tightly coupled and too lacking in actual facts to establish exactly WHAT is happening and WHAT the consequences of tinkering with the systems will be.

Have you ever read Gleick's book on chaos theory?

You ought to do so before you tinker...

Doug D.

[RoyGBiv]

59. Name them ...

I want names of economists and finance experts who claim we have no crisis.

Give me the evidence.

OnEdit: Please don't feed me Friedman disciples. If that's what you've got, prepare to be as ignored as you'd ignore someone who cited a climatologist paid by the oil industry who claims climate change is a myth.

[Virginia Dare]

176. What we're facing is inflation or deflation..

if we pump Federal dollars into the system, then yes, we face rampant inflation, if we do nothing, then we're most probably facing deflation. Which would you prefer? Basically it's a choice between being shot and being hung.

[gatorboy]

57. Did you just arrive on planet earth, sir? Things have BEEN bad.

Or haven't you noticed? Oh wait, you haven't! It's as if the recession talk prior to the bailout was urban legend.

Or perhaps you're one of the "have mores" that is not directly affected by the slowing economy. I'm guessing the latter.:eyes:

[ddeclue]

60. That still proves nothng W.R.T. needing to bail out Wall Street...

the economy sucks does not prove that there is a need to give Wall Street 700 billion dollars...

Sorry that's a giant leap in logic unsubstantiated by the available facts.

[gatorboy]

65. So you DO believe the economy is in dire straights?

Thank, God. Maybe you're not THAT far in your ass after all.

[ddeclue]

69. NO the economy isn't in DIRE straights...

it's not good but this is hardly the Great Depression or even as bad as it was in 1990-1991 or as it was in the late 70's

You have no sense of history apparently

Doug D.

[gatorboy]

74. What is the difference between the economy sucking and being in dire straights?

Do you have any examples to support what the diffrences are?


Bueller?

[gatorboy]

89. I just realized that for a year Bush has also said that the economy is not in dire straits.

So you're also parroting Bush talking points while at the same time pretending to condemn him? :rofl:

[Virginia Dare]

177. Um, yes it is..

how can you be in such denial? This has been building for a long time, it didn't just happen over night, we're facing a mountain of debt and not enough cash to pay for it. The bill came due, and the accounts are all empty. Where do we go from here? It's most definitely a crisis, at least in the financial world, if not in yours.

[RoyGBiv]

67. That is not the question ...

In your initial message, you never mentioned the specific bailout bill that failed in Congress, nor Paulson's previous abomination, which *many* economists and other experts who are fully aware of the depth of the crisis we are in do not like.

The question is whether we are in crisis, and you likened those who say we are and that *something* needs to be done to address it to global warming deniers.

[ddeclue]

71. Nobody has proved that we are in "crisis" sir..

again just assertions not evidence.

The original bill was a literal hijacking of Congress' power of the purse.

[RoyGBiv]

77. Have you read my links yet?

Or were you just saying you wanted evidence because you didn't think anyone would provide it?

And, I would like to add, if you disagree with those discussions I've linked for you, it would then be up to you to provide your counter-evidence.

[Virginia Dare]

178. What proof do you want or need?....n/t

[bvar22]

122. I have some evidence.

*The market rose 500 points today.

*The dollar is stable on the currency markets.


Those two facts DO cast some doubt on the panic monger's wailing crys of immediate doom if we didn't give Wall Street $700 Billion of our children's dollars yesterday.
I believe YOU were one of those "wailing criers of doom" yesterday.

Oh yeah,
*My ATM card still works.

[Virginia Dare]

182. That debt didn't just disappear though..

using that as evidence is like tracking the daily gallup poll, it means very little in the scheme of things. The market is running on fear and uncertainty right now. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen. The reaction today is due to the market feeling good about a bailout package being passed. It could change dramatically tomorrow. The overall economic picture hasn't changed and that is indeed pretty crappy right now, and will be for some time.

[spoony]

153. On a side note, that is the coolest sig pic ever ever ever

[RoyGBiv]

50. Evidence of what?

What you're asking is for someone to prove what is going to happen tomorrow or the next day, and I cannot do that.

Your argument is disingenuous. You compare those who have articulated the very real problems we are facing right now (the potential of economic meltdown) with the very people who are ignoring very real problems we are facing right now (global warming deniers).

EVIDENCE has been provided at volume of the problem we are facing, right this moment. Vast speculation exists over what might happen, just as vast speculation exists over what might happen with global warming. The only thing we can say for certain is that the problem is real and that if left unchecked, it threatens to ruin each and every one of us.

Now, I suppose you want some links. Fine.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/09/today-in-financ.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/business/23how.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253801/the_us_and_global_financial_crisis_is_becoming_much_more_severe_in_spite_of_the_treasury_rescue_plan_the_risk_of_a_total_systemic_meltdown_is_now_as_high_as_ever

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/opinion/15krugman.html

That should keep you busy for awhile.

[Hannah Bell]

165. SOP for some folks; mischaracterizing arguments & ad hom.

They ain't got nothing else but that.

[MilesColtrane]

187. You can't really provide the evidence of an event until after it's happened.

You can evaluate current conditions and use logic to deduce the likelihood of an event occurring though.

[wtmusic]

72. I admit it. I'm a hired gun of the Paid Activist Shills Who Are Deluded

Into Thinking That Public Relations Firms for Powerful Lobbies Never Target Successful Discussion Boards.

And I agree with you.

[RoyGBiv]

81. Did you get your check?

Mine from my organization bounced. I'm rather peeved about it.

FWIW, I know they target us. I just think it's a mistake (and rather insulting to dismiss the wide breadth of vast intellect that has commented on this issue here in the last few days. (I'm not including myself in this at all, btw.)

People like HamdenRice, Ozymandius, AnneD, and countless others have all been talking about it with more than a little competence.

Disagreement on the "bailout" issue is another matter.

[wtmusic]

90. Mine bounced too

but I know they're good for it...they're invested in a hedge fund with equity in your group. :D

I hear you, what I see is a lot of frustration with know-it-alls who claim this or that is going to happen with absolute certainty. No one knows, not Paulson, not Congress, no one.

Based on what's gone down so far I don't see any kind of imminent crash happening, and it's not for economic reasons but psychological ones. People aren't accepting the fact of how bad the problem is, and ironically that's a good thing. There may be a bank run here or there, but for the most part people will keep doing their jobs and making less and less. Hard times a-comin' - but banks need to do business, and their business is lending money.

[gatorboy]

14. Boy, I wish.

I could really use the fucking money. What with the depression we're about to have.

[depakid]

15. It wouldn't be DU without laughable conspiracy theorists!

[Festivito]

84. It wouldn't be DU without laughable anti-conspiracy theorists!

Sometimes I wonder if they know we have laws against conspiracy.

[depakid]

88. At least the 9-11 conspiracy folks got their own forum

and the anti-vaccine types are relegated to the health forum.

[Dover]

101. There probably aren't enough PRO-bailout people to start a forum.

Or enough ANTI-conspiracy (if that's what you like to call it) people either.

Must be rough being the minority.

[depakid]

144. What's rough is being a rational person with a little knowledge

of macroeconomics and how businesses conduct day to day operations- and being persistently confronted not only with conspiracy theories- but also with denial, willful ignorance, and downright malice by those who'd want to drag every other person down to wallow in the levels of their misfortunes.

That in addition to those who'd cut of their own noses to spite their faces, in some bizarre belief that by crashing the economy- and potentially losing their own jobs, they're going to somehow punish a relatively few "fat cats."

[Dover]

146. You really think this little bailout would remedy that?

There's a bridge in Alaska I'd like to sell ya...

[depakid]

150. Failing to act- and act PROMPTLY

dramatically increases the chances that this will spiral out of control. Obama described the consequences of that in Reno yesterday:

"If we do not act, it will be harder for you to get a mortgage for your home or the loans you need to go to college or a loan you need to buy a car to get to work. What it means is that businesses won't be able to get the loans they need to open new factories, or hire more workers, or make payroll for the workers they have. What it means is that thousands of businesses could close around the country. Millions of jobs could be lost.

What people don't understand is that there's PLENTY of time to deal with some of underlying problems and progressive and hold the people responsible to account. Their day of reckoning will come- but that'll be sometime in 2009.

Unforunately, if some get their way, condiditions in this country will be a very ugly place by then-

[Dover]

151. Really hard to swallow that when some on his economic team

contributed to creating this mess. Glass-Steagall comes immediately to mind.

[Hannah Bell]

166. follow the players, & they all took part, from greenspan (jp morgan)

to paulson (goldman) & everyone in-between. It's ludicrous that some folks try to paint them as disinterested patriots, they're sharks.

[hfojvt]

164. what I find ironic too

is that somebody making $80,000 a year apparently feels like he is already drowning in misfortunes. Four times my income, yet he feels like a pauper.

[TZ]

186. You know being concerned and thinking there is a REAL problem

in the financial sector..doesn't mean you go hand in hand with being "pro-bailout".
I think its because BOOSH says there is a problem that people don't think there is.
I have no doubt if Bush said the economy is fine nothing is wrong the majority of people here would be SCREAMING for a "rescue" plan!

[Waiting For Everyman]

16. Agree with you. Addressing the cause of this might help.

Wall St. gets its shills for free though. It has lots of groupies. Most of them don't understand the similarity between home equity and stock equity. Evidently only stock equity is "real". Brilliant. You can see how we got here.

[gravity]

17. You caught me

I hope I can still get my paycheck from Goldman Sachs

[TexasObserver]

18. A workable Bailout in two easy steps.

1. A copy of the Bankruptcy Code.

2. A map showing the location of all the federal courthouses in America.

[lostnotforgotten]

19. I Was Thinking The Exact Same Thing Today - Notice That As The

Market rebounded most of the acrimony disappeared.

[Individualist]

21. Anytime the cabal and their DLC pals try to sell something,

you know it has to be bad. They're trying to sell the bailout the way they sold IWR, with lies and fear, but people have wised up to their tricks since then.

[willing dwarf]

23. Well opinions vary greatly

but liberal establishment type economists like Paul Krugman, Dean Baker and Robert Reisch are informative sources for the need to do something.

It's remarkable how strong and convincing arguments can be made for snd against a bailout. I would hope this is a place where ideas can be examined openly without a group-think approach.

I mean, surely tolerance and open-minded thought are hallmarks of a liberal approach. At the same time though, if there are provacateurs on here trying to sway public opinion with their manipulations...one needs to be alert and aware.

Above all, it seems to me, shills and cyncial self-serving news spinners give themselves away if your pay close attention. An expectation of fair and honest discourse usually results in such discourse. So my approach is to try to treat everyone with respect, but thake their opinion with a grain of salt.

[unblock]

26. wow, and your "logic" that the sky ISN'T falling is impeccably supported by evidence.

is somone paying YOU to post these insults?

earlier i posted a bloomberg chart of the ted spread evidencing how much banks don't trust each other.

my job involves helping companies find funds to roll over debt. I HAVE SEEN FIRST HAND FOR OVER A YEAR how completely screwed up the credit markets have been. sorry if my client list is not public information.

i'll agree that cries of a depression by next tuesday are hyperbolic, but i assure you the credit markets are completely jammed up right now, and the consequences will be NOT AT ALL PRETTY.


there's plenty of room to argue over solutions, but denying the problem is just silly. mind you, it's not your fault; i blame bush and other so-called leaders for LYING TO THE PUBLIC YET AGAIN, claiming "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" when they've been nothing of the sort for over a year now. for most people, this is an all-of-a-sudden thing, so i understand the skepticism. for me, it's VERY old news and i'm just glad it's FINALLY broken through to public awareness.

[ddeclue]

35. You haven't proved anything...

all you are doing is more fearmongerng...

In fact you CAN't prove anything unless you have subpoena powers, and can get warrants and seize records and conduct an investigation. What we have right now are a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions from a bunch of known liars - BushCo.

And your chart is hardly "evidence"...as Mark Twain once said there are lies, damned lies, and then there's statistics... did you collect the data yourself or are you simply cutting and pasting something from someone else that is based on assertions that they received from yet another party?

I'll wait for the result of six months of Congressional investigation first thank you very much..if you're right then we'll know when the market fails... in the mean time I'm not about to hand over 700 billion dollars to someone because they TELL me it's gonna fail and then have them tell me thanks it fixed the (never happened) crisis.

That's called a confidence game and how dumb do you have to be to be suckered in by it.

High pressure, dire consequences... all this is designed to keep people from thinking and to convince them to panic.

[depakid]

42. Thankfully, sensible leaders like Barack Obama understand what's going on

and going to do their best to protect you and others from yourselves.

[ddeclue]

52. NO he's not...

He's not going to just go along with anything...

Thanks for protecting me but I'm a big boy and I don't need it...

[depakid]

62. Actually, you do need protecting

as do others- they need protection too from those who'd bring the economy down to satisfy their own pet theories and prejudices.

[ddeclue]

70. No I don't need the thought police to "protect" me from thinking for myself and refusing to panic

like the rest of the sheep...

Thanks but as I said NO THANKS...

now run along little sheep and go panic somewhere else...

[gatorboy]

76. "Thanks but as I said NO THANKS..." Where have I heard that before...

Oh, you really are Palin! :rofl:

[depakid]

82. You're not critically thinking! You're acting on faith and ignoring facts!

as well as engaging in psychological projection re: being a sheep.

Fact is you haven't a clue and when someone posts FACTS AND ANALYSIS that shows you for instance that CREDIT MARKETS FROZE (*which is unprecidented) and that this a WORLDWIDE problem- not a Bush & Wall Street conspiracy, you simply reject those facts out of hand.

You remind me very much of the anti-vaccine crusaders who post here (and in fact, just about every single one of them is on some nutty conspiracy theory on this issue as well).

As I said, thankfully Obama understands what's up- and what the consequences of refusing to acknowledge the sitation and failing act to remedy it quickly are.

[RoyGBiv]

86. Well said. n/t

[bvar22]

124. Ahhh, you might want to take a few minutes and examine Obama's funding.

I really don't trust someone who is funded BY Wall Street to protect me FROM Wall Street.

Those who don't ask questions are SUCKERS!

[unblock]

45. your denials are based on complete ignorance and stubbornness

you're absolutely correct not to trust shrub. if i didn't have professional insight into the markets, i certainly wouldn't listen to him. in fact, i never do anyway.

but there most certainly IS a significant problem, and i call hogwash on your demand for "proof" while completely rejecting "statistics" out of hand.

i wish the proposal had been better thought out, i wish it had been presented better, i wish shrub's name were nowhere near it. then maybe people could look around and see what's actually going on and try to fix it, rather than just reacting to which side shrub's on.

btw, don't worry, the 700 billion won't completely solve the problem. it will only buy us time to get some real fixes in place. even then, it's not like the economy's going to just start booming.

we're basically quibbling about how severe and long a recession we're going to have.

[ddeclue]

55. No it's NOT unreasonable to demand PROOF for a 700 billion dollar bailout.

You are busy making assertions you can prove in your response and assuming a great deal.

I don't take anything on faith from these clowns.

[unblock]

85. how can i POSSIBLY prove anything to you if you dismiss economic statistics out of hand?

your distrust of shrub is such that you can't conceive that he's stumbled on to the right side of an issue and so your mind is closed.

i'm as liberal as the come -- teddy's too conservative for me -- and i know that the economy is in serious need of some form of government intervention. i'm hardly enamored or the bailout plan, certainly not as paulson originally proposed, but the government must do SOMEthing. i can't help it if shrub is advocating my side. i wish he wouldn't, he's obviously not helping.

do yourself a favor and IGNORE SHRUB. don't let his position poison you into taking the opposite without looking at the evidence, thinking, and forming your own conclusion.

and ask yourself, why are there so many knowledgeable du'ers favoring some form of bailout? certainly there are plenty opposed, but, isn't it interesting that the "opposed" posts usually start out with some variant of "i'm hardly an expert, but",....

and most of the ones favoring some government help start out with something like, "i'm very plugged into the finance sector and i can tell you..."?

[RoyGBiv]

96. You said a mouthful right there ...

I'm coming around to understanding that Shrub's support of government intervention is one of the biggest problems, on all kinds of levels. The plan he and Paulson originally supported was garbage, and the plan voted down in the House little better, and they were put forward to try to get Republicans to support it.

If I weren't wearing my own tinfoil, I'd think he was doing it on purpose to make sure any kind of intervention failed.

[juno jones]

32. I am for action

But it must be the right action. Feed the beast a little to get it moving again, but reserve the bulk until real hearings can be made, hopefully with appropriate legal/judicial/punitive backup in the next administration. Hopefully it will be Obama's to deal with. He's the only person running at his point who has a chance and is remotely sane.

[FreakinDJ]

44. I think there are a LOT of Out of Work Wall St - posting

here at DU, radio talk shows, and any where they think they can get an audiance

[TahitiNut]

47. Huh? What's up?

[ddeclue]

75. I've got to sign off for a while... that's pretty funny...

:rofl:

[sarcasmo]

48. Economic Terra!

[OhioChick]

49. Without a doubt. n/t

[Better Believe It]

56. No They've Never Heard Of DU .... too busy counting their money

We are in an economic crisis. I don't think anyone can dispute that who isn't paranoid.

[ddeclue]

73. No the PARANOID ones are the ones claiming there IS a crisis..

They are the ones who think the end of the world is nigh...

All I'm asking for is some real proof not assertions. That's not too much to ask of my government is it?

[Better Believe It]

99. I Don't Support The Bailout But There Is A Severe Economic Crisis

I don't know of any serious economist who now questions this be they from the left or right or somewhere in between.

[girl gone mad]

63. There is not..

a single doubt in my mind.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

66. Doug, I have been reading DU for over 6 years

and posted under another name for a long time, AmandaRuth. I was thinking this exact thing on the way home from work tonight, and I am absolutely convinced there are trolls, disrupter's and propaganda artists running around here. I think you right in your assumptions

For instance, there was an article on the web not too long ago about the McCain campaign paying to have people post on the "liberal" blogs.

[yodoobo]

79. Nah. would be a waste of money

Without a doubt, wall street is trying to wield influence and get their way.

But why would they waste their money trying to influence me? I can't save their asses.

No. The power brokers are definitely trying to buy influence(probably successfully), but I cannot imagine that they would be spending their money trying to influence keyboard commandos like me.

Obviously if you a senator or congressman and are reading this, then the above doesn't apply to you, but I think lawmakers are a pretty small minority on internet forums.

edit to add: Plus after eight years of this, I would have thought we would have found "confessions of a paid shill" type stuff coming to light. No way you could hire an army of shills and not have a few have a change of heart.

[Greyhound]

80. The "professional posters" do exist there have been articles and want ads

posted here.

Is DU big enough for them to come into? There seems to be an increase in the number of coincidentally similar posts and cooperative factions, but who knows?:shrug:

[scheming daemons]

83. Yeah... I'm a shill.... I've been laying in wait on DU, posting 1000s of non-economic-related posts

...just waiting for the right moment to shill or Wall Street.


When I signed up at DU back in 2004... it was all in anticipation of THIS moment in history right now.


To keep my cover, I posted tons of stuff that had no relationship to Wall Street whatsoever.


And I masqueraded as a fervent Obama supporter all these months to build up my DU street cred.


Damn... you discovered me.


:eyes:

[RoyGBiv]

87. Did your check clear?

I really want to get on top of this.

There's not really a problem, so the check should clear, right? Right?

:-)

I know it's not funny, but I have to find something to laugh at, so it may as well be this.

[gatorboy]

92. I for one am disappointed. Six figures is not what we agreed to AT ALL.

We're either re-negotiating this or I refuse to leave my "Palin has more executive experience than Obama" comments at the Huff.

[RoyGBiv]

93. Yeah, I'm on the verge of being outta here ...

This is not what I signed up for at all.

I got staff to pay and a yacht to clean, dammit.

Hell, they didn't even deliver my pony. I took a cut in base pay for the pony.

[nadinbrzezinski]

108. I see fellow Lehman Brothers friends

Hey we got hosed

:-)

At this point this is the only thing I can do with the willful ignorance

[RoyGBiv]

113. Where do suppose our boss is?

I heard he got a room in Cheney's hideout, but he got kicked out 'cause he cooked a Hot Pocket in the microwave the other night, and it messed up Dick's pacemaker.

It's just a rumor, mind you. But I bet he knows where my pony is.

Yeah ... this is all I got left too.

Hell, even the Friedman-esque economics professor where I work was freaking today.

[nadinbrzezinski]

115. Do tell about the supply sider though

and I guess we will have to track them ....

Hmm problem is that the West Wing has marine and SS protection... and according to some here, this is being managed from the West Wing

I told them NOT to load that simulation... but did they listen? NOOOOOO

It was titled ... 1929 bank crash\1931 bank failures...

And it had a LARGE warning... DO NOT run on non-isolated systems... for teaching purposes only

Next I know the Patriot Games Computer simm will be loaded at NORAD... that is all we need now...

[RoyGBiv]

125. They never listen ...

I think you better inject a tapeworm into the backdoor (don't tell Malvin I told you about that) and hope they can't brute force a solution.

Also, unplug the phone.

It started with Lehman going down. He doesn't see that as a natural reaction, and you know how they are with their thinking the economy is a quasi-living thing with some all-powerful mystical godlike being keeping things working in perfect tune over the long-haul. Lehman shocked him. One of those "too big to fail" organizations took a dirt nap, and he was certain that wouldn't happen.

And since then he's been paying attention to what's been going on in Europe more than most folks I know. What got him worked up today was the bank ... I forget the name and am being lazy at the moment ... that was bailed out yesterday. He sees the credit crisis and the banks not talking to each other for the moment and thinks all this being timed with the start of the quarter is going to be bad, bad, bad as we move into retail's make-it-or-don't period.

Of course he also is one of these people that thinks the root cause of the problem is not the lack of regulation but the interplay of forces caused by large-scale deregulation in one sector competing with regulation in another. It's not that the investment banks didn't have enough oversight, iow, but that the traditional banks did and then were "forced" to compete by trying to get around all that.

It's never the criminal's fault. It's the people trying to prevent the criminal from doing what he does getting in his way and causing all kinds of collateral damage.

But he's still freaked.

That's about all I got out of him. I just saw him in the hall for a bit and picked his brain. I generally like him. He thinks Bush is an idiot, so we at least have that in common. He was just raised at the trough of laissez faire and can't kick it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

156. unplugging

ten four... now I'd better go 10-8 on the whole thing

Or perhaps 10-17

(Ah those years of actually using the ten code)

[anigbrowl]

95. It's all part of our dastardly masterplan

Some of that stuff we say might look factual, but we own wikipedia and have blackmail photos of the financial bloggers, so they write whatever we say

[Subdivisions]

179. Funny. When I read the title of the OP before clicking on it, the very

first person I thought of was you.

You act as if an already established member couldn't be persuaded to say good things on their (your brother's) behalf.

[chupacabranation]

91. Sorry but, DU's got little to no leverage when it comes to general public opinion.

Seriously.

What kind of smack are you shooting?

I'd like some.

[Deny and Shred]

94. I think we do need transparency.

Printing the M3 again would be a move toward transparency, but might truly scare the global financial world. It could be a very bleak piece of news.

Obviously, something extreme has been happening and getting worse. The 'toxic' derivative market has terrified all financial players into near paralysis.
Bernake started a plan of buying CDOs et al, and accelerated it to $30 bil a month after Bear Stearns. Nobody balked. Nobody even talked. I'm surprised Paulson didn't just add a zero to that program.
My guess is that since nobody is asking about that, Paulson thought he could propose a similar thing only with a bigger price tag. The price caught everybody's attention.
The federal government's cherry-picking of who ought to fail, whom to save, after how much in losses should the Federal guarantees kick in, and government agency-brokered deals between companies is truly bereft of logic, fairness and transparency and ought to stop. I notice Paulson's timing was before his beloved GS followed suit.

Show us the results of Bernake's ongoing program - who is selling, what have the taxpayers bought, probabilities and timeframes for seeing a return on those purchases, and then maybe we can get a disparate body like Congress to work on tweaking their various plans. Until then, it's looking like good money after bad.
The complexity and opacity make formulating a way out of it a guessing game.
If it is as bad as some say, we ought to get it right. Even the mighty US Federal Government has only so many $700 billion bullets it can fire.

[chicagoexpat]

97. They're arriving in black helicopters... can't you see thru ur tinfoil hat?

McCain Campaign Soliciting Trolls to Invade Web Site Forums

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7262075

Hope you can bail out all the states w/ ur personal check book.I'm sure u can afford it

State of Massachusetts denied credit!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7256498&mesg_id=7256498

[ShortnFiery]

100. Oh yeah, and those little monsters are sure earning their pay. eom.

[lala_rawraw]

102. i would if i were them...

i do think there are some people who are really frightened... but my gut is that yes, some of these people are scammers.

[Dover]

103. HOW ELSE can a minority create the illusion of being a majority?..n/t

[alarimer]

105. I suppose it's possible.

We don't really know who anyone is online, after all.

[MilesColtrane]

189. That's exactly what someone who was being paid, yet wanted to appear...

...fair and disinterested would say!

Obviously they've gotten to you too.

[nadinbrzezinski]

107. Hmm my bosses at Lehman Brothers hired me four years ago

to start writing of 1929 fundamentals... because gee... my hair is truly not on fire and has not been in fire for the last four years

Sadly my check was sent from Lehman, they said they'd like to transfer it to either WAMU or WACHOVIA

Yet it still does not clear, since those institutions did go away.

:sarcasm:

Perhaps the people posting this have a clue acquired from EXTENSIVE readings of history and economics and at this point we are far more in the I told you so category, which gives me no pleasure.. so sue me for actually paying attention when I went to school.

By the way... you ARE a flat earther... and this crisis has been building for over a year now in a clear fashion

Oh and the initial monies allocated are 250B with 100B discretionary and after that with congressional approval, but since you have not bothered reading the actual bill I don't expect you to even know that.

By the way, you might want to google my posts for a long time on both the economy board and GE... and I mean the LONG TIME warning this crisis was coming.

[Adsos Letter]

109. The regular posters over in the Economics forum....

have been warning about this since the end of last summer, at least. I joined DU early in 2007, and there was quite a bit of talk about it over there then.

[nadinbrzezinski]

110. Absolutely I am not a regular, regular

but have posted enough about this happening for at least two years

If not longer
I've had this conversation with my dad as well as other family members

If anything the administration has been in deep denial, like the Hoover Administration was, and my tinfoil hattery involves the President not being in charge, based on an off comment yesterday, when he said he needed to meet with the President about this... my ears perked up

He IS the president, so either he's had a psychotic breakdown or a nervous breakdown

That is my tin foil hattery moment, and based on US history... would not shock me either, especially this close to the end of this administration

[Adsos Letter]

118. "He IS the president, so either he's had a psychotic breakdown or a nervous breakdown "...

While it may well be true that Bush is back on the bottle at this point, I have long thought that the 9/11 attack actually did catch him by surprise, and overwhelmed his internal capacities to the degree that they have been holding him together on large doses of various psychotropics...I mean, look at how much more poorly he speaks than he did during the 2000 campaign. Developing a "wet brain" can certainly do it, but so can combinations of antidepressants, anxiolitics, overarching stress, and, perhaps, booze thrown into the mix. All in a character not developed to handle situations requiring...well...character.

This in no way excuses his cooption/cooperation with the neo-cons, but I think it made it easier for them. He just looks, these days, like he is ill and wants desperately to get out of public view and tuck himself into that bottomless bourbon bottle.

[gatorboy]

111. It's what I mentioned in a post earlier.

We've been discussing how dire everything has become since the beginning of the year here. But today, I must've logged onto Bizarro DU because suddenly, everything is peachy again.

[nadinbrzezinski]

114. Believe you me, it is

I actually went to Free Republic, so you don't have to

The parallels in the weird thinking are astounding

A radio caller to the Reagan show had the same thinking I did (yes I have been monitoring those too)... it is as if the extreme American left and the extreme right are clasping hands under the table...

It is bizarre

It is disturbing

[earth mom]

132. What's disturbing is to see people like you preaching * propaganda.

:puke:

[Adsos Letter]

116. My apologies gatorboy...

I have a bad habit of not reading all thye posts in longish threads. :toast:

[gatorboy]

119. I wouldn't put you through that.

:P

[Adsos Letter]

120. Your gracefullness shall be known by your enemies, long before you meet them, my friend...

...or somethin like that... :rofl: ...it was a line from Kingdom of Heaven... :D

[RoyGBiv]

126. Yeah, peachy ...

For some reason we've got people thinking a 700pt drop in the Down one day and a 400pt bounce the next day is a good thing, rather than what it is, a violently volatile reaction to forces that are rapidly spiraling out of control.

People pay too much attention to the DOW without actually paying any attention to it, if ya know what I mean.

[Adsos Letter]

128. I was under the impression that the 29 crash was followed by a recovery...

and then a series of market swings of increasing intensity, but with an overall downward trend until about 1933/34... :shrug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

133. and the bank failures came in 31

the bank failures are here

[RoyGBiv]

136. And that's another thing ...

... that is making me crazy(-ier). (Edited to add the "-ier.")

People seem to have this idea it all happened in one day, and since this isn't happening in one day, it's not a problem, so we can just ignore it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

134. and the bank failures came in 31

the bank failures are here

[RoyGBiv]

135. Well, yeah ...

Don't quote me on that 'cause it's been awhile since I really looked at the numbers from the 29 - 33 period.

But that's my point. People see the 400pt gain, forget the 700pt drop, and don't look at the trends, and then they fail utterly to look at the forces that are causing those trends in the first place.

There are people that actually think Hoover "solved" the economic crisis of his time and that FDR screwed it up again and then only got "lucky" with WWII. They think this in part because they look at some of the brief reactions to his attempts to find a policy without viewing the broader picture, and they look at what was taking place once FDR started his programs both without looking at those trends and without taking into account the deep trough we were in at the time, i.e. the marginal improvements that started didn't get us back to 0 for a long time ... and hey, look at this jump over here when Hoover was there. That *proves* he was doing well.

Or something like that.

Going from memory here, and history is my area, not economics per se.

[Adsos Letter]

138. "high-five"...

History is my area also...but I'm also going from vague memory cause I'm too lazy too get my butt up and research it in A Nation in Torment by Ellis; it's sitting about 6' above me, but would require getting a stool...or simply getting up, for that matter... :D :hi:

[RoyGBiv]

142. Getting up ...

Not on my list of things I want to do at the moment either.

That, and I've read so much in the last two days I feel like I've been in a grad seminar with a presentation due tomorrow and tried to do the reading list in one night.

I'm also more of a 19th century political person. 1933 is at the far end of what I focus on. (And I'm not a professor or anything in case it seems I'm implying that. I just work with and for a lot of 'em and do my own things from time to time.)

[Adsos Letter]

143. Hey, me neither...

I'm just getting into my reading list for the comps (85 books worth)...right now it is "all Puritans, all the time." Hope to have my MA by the end of next summer.

[RoyGBiv]

145. Nice ...

:thumbsup:

JSTOR (and its vast collection of reviews) is your friend.

Best wishes on the comps. A friend finished hers for her PhD at Rice last summer. She's ABD now and has momentary fantasies about staying that way.

I was her study partner for one of her areas and haven't been able to read anything since without finding some connection to C Vann Woodward in it. And I seem to have memorized the _Origins of the New South_. I may have to be lobotomized. :)

[Adsos Letter]

148. JSTOR IS my friend...as well as some online denominational archives....

Millerism...Millerism.... I've been fortunate to be allowed a break from 19th century religious movements...me and ol' William Miller were becoming very good friends, though he has been dead lo these many years.

"Didn't you go up? I thought you'd gone up...wife didn't go up and leave you to burn did she?" One of my favorite lines from the Great Disappointment...

Bests to ya'... Adso's Letter (I chose my board name after an extended period of studies in Western apocalyptic). :toast:

[nadinbrzezinski]

155. Ye of little faith and fun

the origins of the Mexican War of Independence and the Enlightenment are lots of fun

Good luck

[Adsos Letter]

157. Thanks, nadinbrzezinski!

I actually love it!

[nadinbrzezinski]

159. I know, I miss it

then I tried to get a job teaching at a JC.. never happened

So these days I write fiction

Don't expect to make fully a living in the field, and that is what I am saying

:-(

The last few days... I am back at my graduate seminars

[Adsos Letter]

160. Actually, I'm 53 and retired....

I earned my BA in History almost 20 years ago. I wanted to switch careers, but circumstances intervened and I ended up retiring out of my original career. I retired and went back to university at the beginning of last year to finish an MA I had started. Maybe I can do a PhD program after this, just for the experience (and education). :hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

154. You want more readying? Bill;s up

they have trade to trade in it

So far have not found capital gains tax cuts, but will not be too shocked

They didn't have that in the executive summary though

Should get it out into WORD format and run a compare on both documents... I know would be easier to see the changes

And graduate seminar... this reminds me more of my international law courses

And I do recommend the executive for most folks... they really cut down on the legalese and it would give folks an IDEA of what they are actually discussing

[dailykoff]

121. Let's just say it would be in their interest to do so

and they're not exactly shy about protecting their interests.

[SidDithers]

123. Here, I made this a while ago...

Feel free to use it when you think it's necessary :sarcasm:



Sid

Edit: Are Republicans paying shills to post here telling us that it's all a hoax, and the economy is in great shape?

[Adsos Letter]

127. LOL!!!

:rofl:

[bvar22]

129. Here is the breakout:

For such a small minority (22%), they sure make a lot of noise,
but I don't think they are paid operatives.

I think they knee jerked an opinion on Friday, and are too ego invested to let it go.


*If you YELL loud enough, it'll be true.
*If you give Wall Street $700Billion, the problem will go away.

Same wishful thinking.

[RoyGBiv]

140. Just a clarification ...

One can recognize the severity of the crisis and still not support Paulson's initial plan (which was abysmal) or the House bill, which was only slightly less abysmal.

Here's another poll:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4133896&mesg_id=4133896

This confusion is causing a problem with communication. Many of those who are talking about the severity of the problem did not and do not support "the" bailout. As I noted in the linked poll, the term "intervention" is, imo, more appropriate to describe what I support overall.

Disclaimer: I saw but did not vote in that poll because there is no such thing as "the" bailout. I just don't think it's helpful to conflate all these elements into one as though vast variations do not exist.

[bvar22]

170. Most of the people opposing the bailout don't deny the crisis.

The Crisis is painfully obvious.
It is also manufactured.
The alarms have been ringing for years.

Some have heeded the alarms and taken precautions.

Last minute Panic Bailing is not going to Fix the Boat. It will be throwing $700Billion dollars of our childrens money at the people who manufactured the problem.


I strongly support measures that will FIX the PROBLEM.
That includes STRONG protections with specific harsh punative measures and defined enforcement proceedures.
"We'll fix it later" is not something I will accept.
I've been to too many carnivals, played 3 Card Monty in Times Square too many times, and heard "We'll fix it later" from The Democats too many times to believe it now.

[RoyGBiv]

171. I dunno about the "most" business ...

A lot of people are throwing around "most" in support of whatever they're thinking at the time, but the only rational thing I can come up with by paying attention to what's going on is that "most" don't really know clearly what they believe.

When it's presented to them one way, they're against it.

When it's presented to them another way, they're for it.

Obviously we have a number of individuals with varying ranges of opinion who are quite knowledgeable. But there are a lot of other people too.

As a nation we have a lack of understanding of economics and financial matters in general. Every year you heard a news report talking about the number of college graduates who couldn't do basic geography or history or something. That's bad enough, but I'd be really interested in seeing what kind of results they got from those same students, giving them a neutral description of supply-side economic theory and even ask them to label it. I would bet the percentage who could answer would approach zero.

[earth mom]

131. I wouldn't be surprised. They've been working overtime since * took office.

:tinfoilhat:

[slampoet]

137. Amen to what you said

[arthritisR_US]

139. no real way to know unless one of them came forward but it sure wouldn't surprise me, n/t

[johnaries]

141. NO! If you want to be informed,

then I suggest you shed your pre-conceptions and Google "broke the buck".

Think about this: why do some of the "most liberal" members of Congress support action? Why do some of the "most conservative" members support action. Is it possible there is more here than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio?

Yes, There most definitely is. Just the very fact that so many on both sides of the aisle "hate" having to do this but still find it necessary should give you pause. Just the very fact that they are willing to risk their political careers for such an unpopular bill should give you pause.

Here, from NPR, this may help explain why everyone is or SHOULD be scared:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95099470

[Honeycombe8]

147. Do you have a 401k? Did you look at it yesterday and today?

That's one of those pesky facts. Other than that, all we can do is rely on so-called experts. It's beyond your abilities and mine to understand all the nuances of the situation and to craft a response that will help.

I've watched a lot of the so-called experts on TV. They have all, I think, recommended passing the bill, or the economy will sink and become possibly as bad as during the depression, they say.

Warren Buffett (who leans Democratic) says so, as well. He is not a panic sort of person at all.

Who else do you think we should listen to? You?

[bvar22]

184. Have YOU looked at your 401K at ANY time over the last two years?

If you had, you would have realized that our current problems did NOT just happen last Friday, but are symptomatic of a long term systemic problem. Panic Bailing by throwing $700Billion of your children's dollars at Wall Street with no guarantees and only token oversight will NOT solve this problem.

[Honeycombe8]

192. Frequently. The problems w/the stock market started this year.

Yes, this has been coming for awhile, I'm sure.

Well, maybe the people in Congress should all be voted out, since they didn't come up with a good bill.

Keep this bill around for a few months, vote out the current Congress and a new one in, and we'll have a new bill come January?

In the meantime, there are so many experts saying that something must be done now. I've since, in the last day or so, heard a couple say that nothing should be done...so there's that, now. I don't know. You don't know. But what if the experts who predict doomsday are right, and the others are wrong? The risk is less to do something, than to not do something, and the doomsday predictors were right.

[spoony]

152. No offense, but you don't even have your profile enabled...

So your calling out long-time posters as trolls or shills doesn't carry a great deal of credibility, but does have a distinct ring of irony.

[TexasObserver]

158. Notice also that on mainstream media, they don't interview economic professors who oppose the bill

I suspect that the people here you suspect of being paid are merely self interested individuals who think THEIR personal port folio should be helped by a government bailout. They could have gotten out of the markets earlier, but Noooooooo. In spite of all the signs a prudent investor would look at and say "hmmm, maybe I'd better move out of risk," they stayed in. Just like gambling at a casino. Some people can't simply walk away with their winnings. They have to hang around, hoping they rebound. Then when they don't, they're shocked.

The DOW is on a steady decline. It has fallen from 14K to 13K to 12K to 11K. But amateur and professional risk takers stayed in. When they lose, it's the downside of risk.

Anyone who lives on debt, or cannot live without it, is likely pro bailout, because it is good for them, and they hope to have US do what they could not do: save them from bad investments.

[Pooka Fey]

161. Yup, you betcha. K&R

[JVS]

163. No, they just love their 401K's more than they love their country.

[HamdenRice]

167. Please put up a profile so we can know how long YOU'VE been here nt

[Marrah_G]

168. So anyone with a different viewpoint then you is some sort of paid shill

Nice.......

[TZ]

181. Thats SOP here in GD for a long time

I get called a shill ALOT....

[LanternWaste]

172. If and only if...

I'd believe that if and only if the converse is true. That being, there are shills posting on DU in an attempt to calm the market, paid for by companies which don't want have their stock devalued.

In other words, no-- I don't think it's the case. I think there are much more effective, efficient, and less expensive ways to game consumer confidence, and with a greater reach.

[Virginia Dare]

173. Possibly, but I would say the more likely scenario..

is that they're paying people to come on here and trash the Democratic leaders so that they can divide us.

[closeupready]

175. I think it's more likely that many who are in finance and will be affected directly by

a failure to bail out these banks are the ones who are hysterical and seek to make the rest of us hysterical, too. (Not working, by the way. lol)

[MadHound]

180. Certainly it seems like it at times

I could probably even name a few, but that would be against the rules here.

[Douglas Carpenter]

183. the facts show that the credit markets are drying up globally and this could very likely

have catastrophic consequences for the economy.

This is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact. Facts are stubborn things.

I would encourage people to simply and dispassionately review the facts. But if people simply have no interest in understanding the situation and understanding how markets work, nothing can force them to.

I own no stocks. I certainly don't work for any financial firms. In fact I am in a peculiar position in which I will most likely neither personally benefit or personally suffer either from the economic meltdown or any government response to the crisis.

I am a lifelong socialist and if it were purely a matter of ideology I would oppose the emergency economic rescue package backed by Sen. Obama and Sen. Dodd (one of the post progressive members of the U.S. Senate and Congressman Barney Frank (one of the most progressive members of the U.S. House of Representatives).

But I support the intervention on purely humanitarian grounds. There is a time in which humanity must take precedence over ideology.

[HamdenRice]

185. Of Course! Because if they can sway opinion at DU, they'll get their $700 billion

Everyone knows that it's the collective opinion of DU that will determine the fate of that $700 billion appropriation, and therefore the fate of the global economy!

So of course, financial firms and greedy capitalists would put aside all the other crises they have to worry about, pull all their lobbyists from Washington and get them to work on a liberal blog!

Conquer opinion on DU and you conquer teh world!!!

Im series! This is hugh!!!1!1

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Ganja Ninja]

188. Check Please!

[natrat]

193. for 700 billion,,yea they are ,they would sell their mothers, fucking crooks