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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (292387)	2/14/2009 1:34:21 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

After awhile these articles seem to all seem to meld into one giant question mark. Bass is just another of those privileged insiders who is smart and makes profits. He's being quite disingenuous when he says; "We're not profiting off other people's demise," I'm sorry.......us small investors will never ever get access to these financial windfalls, and imo most of these guys spend their every waking moment dreaming of how to get rich, which is almost always paid for through small investor contributions. I was wondering last night how many times in our history has our govt had to prop up the economy through economic stimulation? Honestly........I don't know. A lot of people are saying this is like many other recessionary events and that our economy always pulls through, and like everything else, this is part of a cyclical trend, but until trust of the market is restored, people aren't going to invest. The Stimulus Package was supposed to do that, but I don't know anyone who is saying this brilliant piece of work will restore confidence, which will restore markets.........just the opposite. I know for the foreseeable future, I'd rather keep my money under the mattress. "What we did is we made a very simple bet, and that very simple bet is that synthetic-CDO managers were over-levered, and they had no idea what they owned. It was two professional investors that made these bets. An individual can't come in and make these bets."

To: KLP who wrote (292387)	2/18/2009 1:12:23 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793955

Coming Today: A Brand New Plan to Pump Up to Reinflate the Housing Bubble That Helped Get This Whole Economic Mess Started Nick Gillespie \| February 18, 2009, 7:40am A Democratic insider tells ABC News about the basics of Obama's big mortgage bailout plan, set to be unveiled today in foreclosure-heavy Arizona: The price tag is $50 billion—from the TARP funds—plus more on top of that from other programs. Government subsidies for lenders to modify loans to homeowners who are struggling to make payments. The government would subsidize the difference. A program through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for homeowners to refinance their mortgages if they owe more than their homes are worth. An effort to make loans more affordable through various means—extending loans, lowering interest rates, and other ways. Whole story here. The details matter a helluva lot, so it's tough to make any definitive statements on something like this. But this much is certain: Something has gone seriously wrong when a housing market that was pumped up into the stratosphere by all sorts of government-related actions isn't allowed to come back down to Earth. And there's certainly wrong with any solution that simultaneously acknowledges that and then moves to keep prices inflated. Last November, at Reason Goes Hollywood in Los Angeles, Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Insitutute analyzed the "Roots of the Financial Crisis," especially government-pushed housing policies (go here for embed code, links, and more): reason.com