$700B Bailout

[milehighassassin]

This is the best plan I have heard in a LONG time:

To: the many people I know who are on my email lists, I don't know who this guy is. But it kind of makes you think......


The Birk Economic Recovery Plan


Hi Pals,

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a 'We Deserve It Dividend'.

AGain, that would create so much inflation that your "free money" wouldn't be worth ****.

A gallon of milk would cost $200

 

[deaner]

Did I miss a couple of decimal places?? Isnt 85B divided by 200M $425??

 

[ruffryder]

Did I miss a couple of decimal places?? Isnt 85B divided by 200M $425??

yes, 85000/200 (numbers in millions) = 425 dollars

 

[deaner]

yes, 85000/200 (numbers in millions) = 425 (in millions)

85,000,000,000 (eighty-five billion dollars) divided by 200,000,000 (two-hundred million people) equals $425 per person according to my calculator. Why are we adding an additional three zeros?

 

[ruffryder]

85,000,000,000 (eighty-five billion dollars) divided by 200,000,000 (two-hundred million people) equals $425 per person according to my calculator. Why are we adding an additional three zeros?

You are right, I got some fuzzy math going on here.... dang unit cancellations...

Yah 425 per person.....

That is a drop in the buck as far as compared to my income taxes are concerned.... go single with no house...

 

[milehighassassin]

This was meant as a good read, If your gonna quote me,then quote me.Dont leave out the best part

It might have been meant as a good read, but it takes up too much space and it wasn't a good read. It doesn't hold water, as pointed out by others the math is off and even if the math were correct it would do NOTHING.

 

[Turtlehead]

Haa!! I never pulled out the calculator. You guys are right

 

[Work - Never]

I say fawk the bailout too. I'm good with my money and i work my *** of every day of my life since i was 13 years old. And now, we the common people get to once again bend over and take it in the poop chute.

And if we do go into a depression maybe it will kill off some of these thieving bastards who can't fend for themselves

If your OK with it so am I, but just understand that if we fawk this bail out you won't have a job or an asset and your cash won't be worth the paper it's printed on. Also understand that we have all contributed to this problem in one way or another. No one is totally blameless.

 

[Snowmark]

bailout

one of the greatest all time acts of corruption by the american gov't...any politician that goes along with this should be thrown out of office.....and we just take it.....if this doesn't bring people into the streets with pitchforks and torches we are hopelessly lame and pacified......these companies made fortunes when they sold these loans.......now see where the bailout money goes.

 

[ruffryder]

one of the greatest all time acts of corruption by the american gov't...any politician that goes along with this should be thrown out of office.....and we just take it.....if this doesn't bring people into the streets with pitchforks and torches we are hopelessly lame and pacified......these companies made fortunes when they sold these loans.......now see where the bailout money goes.

I think there is more to it... these companies that are gong to be bailed out are not the ones that sold them, they are the ones that bought them, hence the reason why the govt will be buying them from those companies.

The ones that made the money are the people that originally wrote the loan, and all the middlemen that sold them, until they found there way as securities for banks and for other types of funds that the big banks had. All the bad mortgages kind of trickled there way to the big banks, at which time the big banks were holding them, when they started to realize that they were becoming worthless...

It was the big banks responsibility to verify the securities, but I don't think they are the ones that gave out most of the loans..... I am not sure about that one though....

 

[milehighassassin]

Ron Paul's very educational views on the subject:

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

 

[BigTruck]

I dont know if this has been covered but........................




The bailout has been approved!!!



It's OK folks. Were all going to be alright now!

 

[ruffryder]

frac that is a good read......

 

[BigTruck]

frac that is a good read......

Dude,

Did you move??

Fall City??

 

[powderbound]

I am not so smart to know exactly what is best but......It was not hard to see coming. millions of people puting zero down, borrowing right up to the limit of what they could afford to pay on an ARM. Then when the vaule went up they took out second and thirds to pay off credit cards etcc... It is not just the big companies that got greedy.

If the GOVT does not bail out these banks, the market will be ugly for a while anywhay. IF they do inflation will skyrocket. Remember 1979 20% interest rates. that will be ugly also.


I am not sure which is worse, but I do know for sure that if the GOVT is in charge they wil screw it up. Al gore has already said thet if a building is built with GOVT backed paper, it should meet green standards. Here we go.

 

[ruffryder]

Dude,

Did you move??

Fall City??

Yes, (well no, not yet) sir... bit(h!

I can't wait to get out of yuppyville I changed my location already... almost there! I don't think fall city has any traffic lights.... it is my kind of town...errr.... group of houses!

 

[ruffryder]

Al gore has already said thet if a building is built with GOVT backed paper, it should meet green standards. Here we go.

I got nothing wrong with that.... the govt should be the leader in energy efficient buildings..... they have the capital to do it.

 

[Good to Go]

I got nothing wrong with that.... the govt should be the leader in energy efficient buildings..... they have the capital to do it.

Ummmmm, I do. Problem is the old "jump on the bandwagon" thing.

Green, perhaps the idea, might not be so bad. But the execution sucks and flat out doesn't work most the time.

Start with the obvious. LP Siding; ever heard of it? It was touted at "Green". Where are the savings and good effects on the earth there?

How much oil did we burn, crap put into the landfills, extra smoke breaks did we take fixing that little problem??

Same goes for making your typical house "Green"...starting with "lets make them air tight". You know, save on energy and all. Of course, we've got to put in air exchangers so people can actually breath (air tight really isn't good for the health), and well, there is the continued debate about longevity of the structures themselves. You know, I'm kind of a believer in that felt paper thing. It's worked fairly well for quite awhile now. The Green movement can have their fancy house wrap...

Point is, yes, it isn't all bad. But as soon as it's required by an all knowing government, you're probably going to wish you hadn't. Knee jerk reactions rarely work well. Same as emotional solutions.

Got Bail Out? Emotional and Knee jerk. Can't wait to see how that plays out.

 

[winter brew]

$5100 per taxpayer.....at 700B but will likely go almost double before it's all over.

 

[Sledsniper]

I Deserve it!

Subject: The Birk Economic Recovery Plan



The Birk Economic Recovery Plan

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in
a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000
bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman
and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a
We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.
Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads
Put away money for college - it'll be there
Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.< /B>
Buy a new car - create jobs
Invest in the market - capital drives growth
Pay for your parent's medical insurance - health care improves
Enable Deadbea t Dads to come clean - or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company
that is cutting back. A nd of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.


If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of
trickling out
a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that is being proposed by
one of our candidates for President.

If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult U S
Citizen 18+!

As for AIG - liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.

Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work."

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion
We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington
DC.

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5
Billion is returned
instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

Birk

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic