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2008-09-25 Home Front Economy

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Posted by tipover 2008-09-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 email sent to a UK banker by somebody...

"With redundancies at investment banks around the globe looming, now is the time for us to show the world how much we care. It's just not right. Hundreds of investment bankers in your very own country are living at or just below the seven-figure income level! Atrocious!

And, as if that wasn't bad enough, they will be deprived of pay for several weeks, possibly a whole year, as a result of their redundancy. But now you can help!

For about two thousand pounds a day - less than the cost of a large screen projection TV - you can help an investment banker remain economically viable in his time of need. Two thousand pounds a day may not seem like a lot to you, but to an investment banker it could mean the difference between a holiday golfing in Florida or a Mediterranean cruise. For you, two thousand pounds is no more than three months' rent or mortgage payments. But to an investment banker, it will almost replace his pay.

Your commitment will enable an investment banker to buy that home entertainment centre, trade in the year-old BMW for a new Ferrari, or enjoy a weekend in Rio.

Each month, you will get a complete financial report on the investment banker you sponsor. Detailed information about his stocks, bonds, property portfolio and other investment holdings will be mailed to your home.

You'll also get information on how he plans to invest the £5 million lump severance package he will receive upon redundancy. Plus you will receive a photo of the banker. Put the photo on your refrigerator to remind you of other people's suffering."

Posted by 3dc 2008-09-25 00:15|| 2008-09-25 00:15|| Front Page Top

#2 3dc: that is too rich...

just forwarded it to my sister. thanks!

Posted by Abu do you love 2008-09-25 01:03|| 2008-09-25 01:03|| Front Page Top

#3 :)

We are SAPS,
Everyone is stealing from us. EVEN BANKERS, LAWYERS, and CEOs want More Money from us CITIZENS.

Even a million ILLEGAL Immigrants who ILLEGALY bought a house with variable-interest-loans and now can't or refuse to pay them back, are DEMANDING YOU AND ME TO BAIL THEM OUT!!

Go ahead you SAP CITIZENS bail the Illegals Immigrants and CEOs out!

OH I almost forgot, DON'T FORGOT The Corporate Lawyers who sheltered the Corporate Executives from any CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, or STEALING LAWS. Well quite naturally they also DEMAND some hand-out walk-around-money too!

grrrr

Posted by Red Dawg">Red Dawg 2008-09-25 02:09|| 2008-09-25 02:09|| Front Page Top

#4 The toxic debt was issued by Fannie/Freddie Mae. The banks bought it because they thought it was guaranteed by the US government and the current bailout proves they were right.

Posted by phil_b 2008-09-25 06:32|| 2008-09-25 06:32|| Front Page Top

#5 Dawg,

Don't forget all the greedy ~~citizens~~ borrowers who bought houses they couldn't otherwise afford with no down interest only adjustable mortgages that their ~~citizen~~ popularly elected legislators told banks to issue mortgages to the worst ~~citizens~~ credit risks in the worst neighborhoods and who planned to flip them in a year...whoops, that's us stealing from us. There's plenty of blame to go around. The only innocents in this game are hermits.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-09-25 07:02|| 2008-09-25 07:02|| Front Page Top

#6 3dc, that's a classic! ;)

Posted by Cornsilk Blondie 2008-09-25 07:24|| 2008-09-25 07:24|| Front Page Top

#7 My own modest proposal:

1. Nationalize the offending institutions and sell their stock to responsibly managed private interests as resources and conditions warrant.
2. Fire their cooked or foolish managers, and limit their severance pay to $20 in quarters and cab fare to the Brooklyn Bridge.
3. Foreclose all the bad mortgages, deport non-citizen borrowers and move the rest into redundant FEMA trailers.
4. Round up the Clinton appointees who ran Fannie and Freddie into the ground; especially including Jamie Gorelick; and send them to Gitmo.
(Gorelick is the Typhoid Mary of national policy, having now done the same thing for the economy that she did for the World Trade Center.)

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2008-09-25 08:16|| 2008-09-25 08:16|| Front Page Top

#8 Ok. If Banks aren't bailed out we will have 1929 all over again. Right?

If Banaks are bailed out they will never learn right?

Solutions? Bail out banks but sent managers and members of the board to firen squad or, if you are soft hearted to Sing Sing (not in one of those nice prisons for white collars) or, still better to had labor.

I fear that is the only solution.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-09-25 08:26|| 2008-09-25 08:26|| Front Page Top

#9 Meanwhile, back in reality:
Bloomberg: FDIC may need $~~800~~ 150 Billion Bailout as Local Bank Failures Mount

IndyMac's failure in July 2008 (the most expensive failure covered by FDIC ever) took a large bite out of FDIC reserves, and if scores of other banks fail in the year ahead, the fund will be depleted. Taxpayers will have to step in. By the end of 2009, about 100 U.S. banks with collective assets of more than $800 billion will fail, predicts Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, a Torrance, California-based firm that sells its analysis of FDIC data to investors. The FDIC has some idea of which banks are at risk; it has a watch list with 117 institutions. The agency won't disclose their names because doing so could cause depositors to panic and pull out all of their funds.
The FDIC insures about $5 trillion in deposits at US branches of FDIC member banks. An additional $2.6 trillion in deposits is uninsured.
Investors are now worried that Washington Mutual (WaMu) may be the next bank to go TU. An FDIC takeover would cost taxpayers another $24 billion.
The FDIC had fallen into the same trap as member banks, relying on the recent past to predict the near future. In March it estimated 2008 costs to cover bank failures as $1 billion, which wasn't even close. Critics of the FDIC say chairman Bair's currently optimistic rhetoric matches the FDIC's failure to grasp the scope of what is likely to come in the next 18 months.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-09-25 08:30|| 2008-09-25 08:30|| Front Page Top

#10 I'm certainly no economic guru, but I do remember the stories my father told of the last depression. This situation looks amazingly similar. Bailout or no, if this crash isn't the knock out punch, the knock out punch isn't far behind. Consumer spending on non-essentials is plummeting, traveling and motoring are off, at least in the SE. I suspect we may see a run on the market and banks in the very near future. I think we're in for a history making ride over the next few years, possibly a decade.

Posted by Besoeker 2008-09-25 08:43|| 2008-09-25 08:43|| Front Page Top

#11 I think we're in for a history making ride over the next few years, possibly a decade. I agree completely. I liquidated my stock holdings, personal & tax-protected, in 8/2007, preserved a ton of money that way. Can only hope my nest egg retains its value.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-09-25 08:47|| 2008-09-25 08:47|| Front Page Top

#12 In 29 the fund players and bankers at least had the decency to jump off the high buildings.
I don't see that kind of honor in the current group.

Posted by 3dc 2008-09-25 08:49|| 2008-09-25 08:49|| Front Page Top

#13 Yes, and I don't really appreciate Barney Fags joking and sorry attempts at humour in these hearings. The guy is an absolute oxygene thief.

Posted by Besoeker 2008-09-25 08:53|| 2008-09-25 08:53|| Front Page Top

#14 Watching Paulson and his Merry Band of Thieves takes me back to Sunday school. Darn, I should have paid more attention to what they were saying. Paulson will be out of a job in six weeks, right! Hence the need for urgency.

Posted by tipper 2008-09-25 10:08|| 2008-09-25 10:08|| Front Page Top

#15 "Can only hope my nest egg retains its value."

That's really the trouble AH9418, it won't. This whole charade is going to result in monumental inflation. It's going on now. Just as recently as the Peanut Farmer's term we saw this. The only things of value were hard physical assets. Every dollar your granddad had in 1908 has the purchasing equivalence of $.10 now. This is going to happen to monies we hold today. The issue we have to try and perceive is whether these same geniuses who created this mess can wave the magic wand and extract us. Doubtful. Some very basic adjustments must be made. We cannot continue to exist on foreign credit. They will quit loaning. This is the Washington Panic. This globalization scheme by the wealth holders of exporting American jobs to make things at greatly reduced cost, yet try to sell back into the only major market, the US, to extract maximum profit for the few wealth holders, is non-sustainable. You don't even have to be a fifth-grader. Second graders can handle this. This does resemble many of the conditions existing around 1930, when Hoover kept telling the public that the basic economy was sound, don't worry. As recently as two weeks ago Bush was repeating this same mantra. Now, suddenly, we must bailout "the system". If this mess crashes, it will take several years to regain smooth functionality, as in the 1930's. If some resolution is reached, it's going to greatly devalue our assets. And, this continued living on borrwed cash must be halted. Anyone want to talk about lifestyle adjustments.

Posted by Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-09-25 12:00|| 2008-09-25 12:00|| Front Page Top

#16 I liquidated my stock holdings, personal & tax-protected, in 8/2007, preserved a ton of money that way. Can only hope my nest egg retains its value.
Excellent move Anguper, as for the foreseeable future, cash will be king. For most people their house is their main source of wealth.
Stabilization in the U.S. housing sector is nowhere in sight: inventories and vacancies are at a record high and continue to put downward pressure on home prices which continue to free fall translating into trillions of real wealth losses for the engine of the economy: the U.S. consumer. You just can't gouge that amount out of any economy and not expect the engine to seize up.
We are moving into an era characterized by the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"

Posted by tipper 2008-09-25 12:47|| 2008-09-25 12:47|| Front Page Top

#17 Blaming illegal immigrants. Well that didn't take long!

Posted by Lonzo 2008-09-25 13:45|| 2008-09-25 13:45|| Front Page Top

#18 All those empty houses? It depends on the city and state. It isn't so bad out here in the center of the Midwest. Detroit is apparently another story... for several reasons.

One thing to consider, though, is that there would have been empty houses anyway. The Baby Boomers have started to retire. Sooner or later they would have left the houses in which they reared their children and moved either to something smaller, in with their children, to Florida or Arizona, or to a retirement home.

Lonzo dear, all those illegal workers in the construction business needed somewhere to live... and they were earning pretty good money. Not to mention that after all the other borderline borrowers had been serviced, the mortgage brokers had to find clientele somewhere. Hence all the advertising in Spanish in the last few years.

Posted by trailing wife ">trailing wife 2008-09-25 14:24|| 2008-09-25 14:24|| Front Page Top

#19 Unless we can only see a few minutes forward, that hotdog truck out front only takes cash, which means, yes, cash will be king for the foreseeable future.

Posted by Mike N. 2008-09-25 14:56|| 2008-09-25 14:56|| Front Page Top

#20 #7 Atomic Conspiracy git's my vote,

[#17 For Lonzo: AND AC gits all my EXTRA VOTES that I manage to either mail in or vote at various precincts on election day to off-set some of the millions of Illegal Immigrants stealing Votes in our sovereign elections.]

Posted by Red Dawg">Red Dawg 2008-09-25 15:44|| 2008-09-25 15:44|| Front Page Top

#21 No, Lonzo, we are asserting that illegal aliens are not entitled to free housing at the expense of the US taxpayer. Do you disagree? If so, why? Are citizens similarly entitled to free housing? If so, who is going to pay for it?

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2008-09-25 18:00|| 2008-09-25 18:00|| Front Page Top

#22 Meanwhile, the largest bank failure in US history came down this afternoon.
"Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, was closed by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was named receiver. Customers should expect business as usual on Friday, the FDIC said. The FDIC said the transaction will not affect its roughly $45.2 billion deposit insurance fund. Washington Mutual's roughly $227 billion book of real estate loans put the thrift at the top of the critical list of U.S. lenders, analysts said. More than half of this portfolio was in home equity loans and in adjustable-rate mortgages and subprime mortgages that are now considered risky. "

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-09-25 22:18|| 2008-09-25 22:18|| Front Page Top

#23 More than 150 prominent U.S. economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, urged Congress to hold off on passing a $700 billion financial market rescue plan until it can be studied more closely.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-09-25 22:22|| 2008-09-25 22:22|| Front Page Top

#24 The bozos at WaMu were still doing zero down Option ARM programs up till a few months ago. The guy who ran the place into the ground seriously needs to be persecuted.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2008-09-25 23:23|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-09-25 23:23|| Front Page Top

#25 persecuted.

Prosecuted.

Posted by General_Comment 2008-09-25 23:27|| 2008-09-25 23:27|| Front Page Top

#26 persecuted.

I kind-of like that phrasing....

Posted by 3dc 2008-09-25 23:38|| 2008-09-25 23:38|| Front Page Top

#27 It implies harassment on religious or otherwise political grounds. For criminal matters it is "prosecuted." Otherwise makes no sense.

Posted by General_Comment 2008-09-25 23:40|| 2008-09-25 23:40|| Front Page Top

#28 as a Commie symp troll, you would know about "persecuted", as in "enemies"

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2008-09-25 23:52|| 2008-09-25 23:52|| Front Page Top

23:58 KissMyAss
23:53 Frank G
23:52 Frank G
23:48 General_Comment
23:40 General_Comment
23:38 3dc
23:34 Eric Jablow
23:33 General_Comment
23:32 JohnQC
23:29 JosephMendiola
23:27 General_Comment
23:26 JohnQC
23:23 Zhang Fei
23:17 JosephMendiola
23:15 General_Comment
23:10 JohnQC
23:10 JosephMendiola
23:07 FOTSGreg
23:03 FOTSGreg
22:59 Zhang Fei
22:58 JosephMendiola
22:58 FOTSGreg
22:54 tu3031
22:50 JosephMendiola