By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General Discussion - Another $800 billion to buy mortgages

mesoteto said:
^not that we could stop him since he was given total control

He wasn't given total control.  The House republicans had that clause taken out.

 



Around the Network
Soleron said:
FishyJoe said:
The problem I have with these interventions is that everything seems to be covered in a cloud. I'm not exactly sure where the money is going. I have no idea if billions are being fleeced out of the system or not. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of transparency or regulation and for all I know Paulson is handing out checks to his buddies.

Yes. "Injected into the economy" could mean anything. Even leaving it in huge piles on street corners counts as injection. At the other end of the scale, no money could be changing hands at all and the $800b could be an accounting trick with adjusting the future, potential value of bits of paper. We also don't know where the money is cominng from, whether it is in bonds, conditional pledges to buy stuff the the future, actual printed money, etc., etc.

 

dunno exactly what this 800 bln is coming from, but looks like it's just the fed's money-printing mechanism, i.e. not bond proceeds.  i think, the hope is that, this is not money that is permanently printed, but that the assets exchanged for the money will be eventually sellable.  this is, again, the "unclogging" argument that we have heard many times now.

printing money is obviously inflationary, but some people would argue now is actually a good time to print money.

with regards to money going to the banks, well, you do know exactly which banks or institutions are getting capital injections.  what you don't know if just how the money is being spent--but it's an ill-defined question because the money just becomes a bank's capital base.

 

 



the Wii is an epidemic.

Just give tax payers their money back to spend instead of bailing out companies that doesn't deserve it!



I think its ironic that everyone has turned into a fiscal hawk now, when there actually is a need for the government to inject money into the economy, but everyone has been pretty quiet for the last eight years while we have been running a deficit even in good economic years.

Its like reverse Keynsianism.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson



Around the Network


Those are some pretty funny commercials.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

akuma587 said:
I think its ironic that everyone has turned into a fiscal hawk now, when there actually is a need for the government to inject money into the economy, but everyone has been pretty quiet for the last eight years while we have been running a deficit even in good economic years.

Its like reverse Keynsianism.

This.

 

I would like to add, that printing money isn't all that dangerous right now. 

From a worldwide perspective, the dollar is overweight anyway.  Much of the world depends on US exports for food, technology, and raw materials.  The overweight dollar has caused these products to be too expensive for many.  Additionally, it exacerbates the plummetting oil prices, while the US benefits from cheaper gas and other petroleum products because of the drop off on demand, the rest of the world sees marginalized benefits and oil producing countries go will go bankrupt if they don't cut supply.  You can imagine the end result of either scenario.

From a national perspective, we are on the verge of deflation, many sectors are already affected.  Housing, energy, electronics, automobiles are cheaper then they were before.  Why is this bad?  Well, the home you bought is worth less than it was before.  The TV on the shelf and the car on the lot in the store is selling for less than it cost them to make.

Increasing the money supply and keeping interest rates low is what is needed.  The government needs to spend more to make up for lost private demand, in combination with a failing banks and no lending we are looking at a very Depression like scenario; where bad sh*t compounds and the economy settles below full employment.  Do we really want to reach a point where the only answer is a switch away from a our  good-enough-pseudo-freemarket or WWIII?

We just need to make sure we slow it down once the situation passes.  Let's not make the same mistakes we made in 2004-2005 when the tax cuts weren't repealed (to the accepted maximizing revenue rates in pretty much every industrializzed nation of 0-40% graduated, except the US), interest rates didn't go up fast enough, and we didn't reregulate lending.  Of course the US economy, is so big and important, we get rich off the developing nations, act irresponsibly running up debt when we shouldn't, agitating markets with war and intrusive foreign policy, spend more than we should on stupid sh*t, and don't build up infrastructure then the rest of the world hates us and we stand there with our d*cks in our hands asking, "Dur, what happened?"



I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.

The economic theories that politicians now practice are often a muddled mess. The Republican Party's economic policy is currently a disaster area.

Democrats:

At least the Democrats are consistent, and tend to agree with each other. They have stuck with Keynsianism and have begrudgingly accepted some supply-side and Friedmanesque policies to good effect. They are no longer advocating the ludicrously high tax rates we had in the past, although they can be a little too quick to intervene sometimes. Not exactly in tune with what most economists think is an ideal economic policy, but its a tried in true formula that the Democrats have modified in light of newer economic theories, which has made it a better policy than it was in the past.

Case and point: Obama will likely hold off on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans until the Bush tax cuts naturally expire or until the market recovers, whichever comes first.

Republicans:

An absolute mess of an economic policy. The Republican Party itself has no idea what economic policy it stands for, and is horribly inconsistent. In recent years, they have essentially taken what they thought were the best ideas of all the policies and glued them together to bad effect.

1) Like Keynsians they are for government intervention and large government deficits at times, but unlike Keynsians they are unwilling to raise taxes.

2) Like conservative economists (roughly the kind of principles Friedman advocates) they are against government taxes and regulation, but unlike conservative economists they have no problem with deficits and are willing to intervene in the market (well at least enough Republicans are for intervention that the government ends up intervening anyways)

3) The one thing all Republicans agree on these days is low taxes, which is ironically what has crippled their brand of fiscal conservatism once deficits started soaring out of control. From their "tax-and-spend" liberal brethren they adopted the "spend" strategy but left behind the "tax" strategy.

Its all a big mess, and the Republican Party needs to figure out a coherent economic policy again or it will sink further into obscurity. They blame government for spending too much money out one side of their mouth but then propose even bigger budgets out the other.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

akuma587 said:

The economic theories that politicians now practice are often a muddled mess. The Republican Party's economic policy is currently a disaster area.

Democrats:

At least the Democrats are consistent, and tend to agree with each other. They have stuck with Keynsianism and have begrudgingly accepted some supply-side and Friedmanesque policies to good effect. They are no longer advocating the ludicrously high tax rates we had in the past, although they can be a little too quick to intervene sometimes. Not exactly in tune with what most economists think is an ideal economic policy, but its a tried in true formula that the Democrats have modified in light of newer economic theories, which has made it a better policy than it was in the past.

Case and point: Obama will likely hold off on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans until the Bush tax cuts naturally expire or until the market recovers, whichever comes first.

Republicans:

An absolute mess of an economic policy. The Republican Party itself has no idea what economic policy it stands for, and is horribly inconsistent. In recent years, they have essentially taken what they thought were the best ideas of all the policies and glued them together to bad effect.

1) Like Keynsians they are for government intervention and large government deficits at times, but unlike Keynsians they are unwilling to raise taxes.

2) Like conservative economists (roughly the kind of principles Friedman advocates) they are against government taxes and regulation, but unlike conservative economists they have no problem with deficits and are willing to intervene in the market (well at least enough Republicans are for intervention that the government ends up intervening anyways)

3) The one thing all Republicans agree on these days is low taxes, which is ironically what has crippled their brand of fiscal conservatism once deficits started soaring out of control. From their "tax-and-spend" liberal brethren they adopted the "spend" strategy but left behind the "tax" strategy.

Its all a big mess, and the Republican Party needs to figure out a coherent economic policy again or it will sink further into obscurity. They blame government for spending too much money out one side of their mouth but then propose even bigger budgets out the other.

Funny how you seem to forget that the Republicans have not run our economy for 2 years now.

The Democrats had a chance to end the war (by not passing the bill to fund it). They didn't, but it's not there fault.

The Democrats could have regulated Fanny and Freddy two years ago when this issue was brought to congress. They didn't, but it's not there fault.

This whole "we can make shit decisions because they made shit decisions before us" is getting old.

Yes, Republicans screwed up. That does not make it OK for Democrats to screw up even more.