RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events The Great Crash of 2008

Stop thinking the government is some great and righteous thing. Its evil and corrupt. It will never handle money well.

you think the daily ups and downs of the market have improved the economy? it's worse now than when they went up right after the announcement. ?

I don't think it's great or rightous Rex. This could go from a recession to a depression though and yeah I'm guilty of thinking it possible that the government can prevent that. Even with the flawed first part of the bailout the stock market responded positively or negatively depending on if it looked like it was going to get passed or not.

but who else will help the gays feel validated?

President-elect will allow gays to serve openly in the military,

I like cock

Obama plans to wash away the years of the Bush Administration wasting taxpayer dollars with his own era of wasteful spending.

$25B Wasn't Enough: Shares of Bank of America hit 52-week lows after the company negotiated $15 billion more in TARP funds

You know, the funny thing is: MEM posts almost the exact same kind of statements all the time... but he thinks they are somehow pro-Obama.

you can bitch about how Obama stalled the recovery.

Technically, he drinks it. It is a liquid, after all.


Do you think that, when MEM takes it up the ass from whichever anonymous gay he's picked up in the fleshbars of Minnesota on a given night, he still screams "give me the strap on Hillary"? Or has he moved on to crying "slip me the sweet bratwurst Mandingo"?

Yes, it's not about the eeeeviilll Republicans preventing regulation, it's about the Democrats over-regulating, requiring millions of home mortgage and business loans to poor individuals who couldn't afford them, who inevitably defaulted on their financial obligations. In Democrats' costly attempt to use our financial system for social engineering.

And quite a few of the architects of this mess are prominent advisors to the Barack Obama campaign. One of whom was on the committee to select Obama's Vice President.

And incredibly, the Democrats blame their own mess on the Republicans who warned them not to do it.

And I agree, McCain should be pounding these facts to the public in stump speeches and campaign ads.

It scares me that the four men most responsible for the economic meltdown, are still making the economic decisions for this country.

Schumer, Dodd, Barney Frank, and Obama (Obama is the second largest recipient of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac campaign donations, second only to Christopher Dodd, and Dodd took 20 years to accumulate his cash pile from Fannie/Freddie, while Obama accumulated over $110,000 in barely 2 years. And Fannie Mae's CEO was on Obama's Vice Presidential vetting committee )

And despite their clear guilt, these four Dems are even more powerful than they were before the election.

Scary indeed.

Obama calls Wall Street bonuses 'shameful'

President Obama thinks it is "outrageous" that securities firms paid their top executives $18.4 billion in bonuses last year, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said this afternoon.

He added that the president will have more to say about this later today.

Though the amount of money paid in bonuses was well below the $33 billion paid in 2007, they were paid in a year when the financial sector's crisis led to a more than $700 billion -- so far -- federal bailout.

Update at 3:45 p.m. ET. "Shameful".

The cable news networks just showed video, taken a few minutes ago, of the president expressing his outrage:

For the firms to pay billions in bonuses last year "is the height of irresponsibility," Obama said. "It is shameful."

Wall Street firms need to "show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility," he added.

They can't be "digging a bigger hole even as (taxpapers are) being asked to fill it up!"


"One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.

"And part of what we're going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of -- but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up.

"And so we're going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them -- and Secretary Geithner already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase at the same time as they're receiving TARP money. We shouldn't have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear."

For the firms to pay billions in bonuses last year "is the height of irresponsibility," Obama said. "It is shameful."

We may never know whether the government's $700 billion bailout of the financial industry worked, according to a new report from congressional auditors.

That's because it will be impossible to sort out which of the recent rule changes and spending programs have made a difference, according to the report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office.

The report covers Treasury's administration of the bailout, called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, through Jan. 23. Nearly $294 billion had been released by that date — almost $200 billion of it through a program to inject capital directly into financial institutions.

The roughly $200 billion in capital injections doesn't include any of the separate money authorized to guarantee losses for Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., or about $20 billion to stabilize automakers Chrysler and General Motors Corp.

"Even with more time and better data, it will remain difficult to separate the impact of TARP activities from the effect of other economic forces," the report said.

Recent moves to improve oversight of the money hadn't gone far enough, according to the report. Treasury introduced a plan to survey the 20 largest participating firms each month following an earlier GAO report that blasted the program's lack of transparency.

More information about how the money was divided and how recipients spent it was still necessary, the new report said.

"We continue to believe that additional action is needed to better ensure that all participating institutions are accountable for their use of program funds," the GAO said.

The report also said Treasury had "taken important steps" to address nine recommendations from the earlier report, which included calls to improve communication about the bailout and hire staff to oversee it.

But Treasury "has yet to fully address eight" of the recommendations, the report said.

"The lack of a clearly articulated vision has complicated Treasury's ability to effectively communicate to Congress, the financial markets, and the public on the benefits of TARP," the report said.

I'm sure MEM will explain to us how life on the planet Earth would have ended back in Sept. if the bailout had never been passed.

Nope. It's not really important to me that we differ in opinion and on this one I'm not nor wasn't sure what the effects of the bailout would have. The threat of what could have happened though and seeing Bush willing to go against his conservatism was enough for me to support it.

...seeing Bush willing to go against his conservatism was enough for me to support it.

Who you gonna believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?

So... you're now denying your bullshit excuses that the bailout prevented greater financial devastation? Got it.

So you were/are less concerned about what was/is good for the country and more concerned with what makes the other political party look bad.

Got it.


That pretty much sums up MEM up right there.

That and

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