700 Billion divided by.....

[mrburns918]

700 Billion divided by 340 million(estimated US population) = ?

Wouldn't this stimulate the economy? No? Maybe? Yes?

Would we all quit are jobs and everything shut down?

What do you think would happen?

[Townsend]

It'd put us deeper in debt no matter how it's distributed.

[FOTD]

"Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"

Jimmy Dean

Kentucky ex-coalminer and singer/songwriter George S. Davis (1904-1992), when recorded by John Cohen for Folkways in 1966, claimed to have written this song in the 1930s according to Wikipedia....

[inteller]

I understand the reprecussions of not doing anything and letting the foreclosure situation extend damage through the economy....but I'm also interested in letting the vast swathes of people who should have never qualified for a loan pre-1999 clinton policies to get kicked out and put back in an apartment.  I think there are PLENTY of WELL QUALIFIED people out there that can take those foreclosed houses over.  Yeah, so the banks are going to take a hit on the lost value....so what.  I think this is a better solution for those of us RESPONSIBLE taxpayers who didn't bite off more than we could chew.  It rewards hard work and good educations.

What bothers me the most right now is how banks through various proxies are trying to pin the blame of this on the Clinton Freddie Mac policies back in the late 90s.  Yes, Clinton was an enabler that got Freddie Mac to offer out all of these creative loan strategies to put anybody and everybody into a house....but you know what?  Banks could still use common sense not to lend money to people who were in fact dead beats.  I think the banks who used common sense will be the ones scooping up the massive failures like Wachovia and WaMu who bought off on all of this free freddie mac money like crack cocaine.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by FOTD

"Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"

Jimmy Dean

Jimmy may have sung it but probably didn't write it.

http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/sixteen.html

[Gaspar]

You could give everyone $2,333 of their own money or you could give only people with mortgages $21,000 of their own money.

How would you choose?

[Gaspar]

Defending the "Congressional Retirement Program"  AKA Freddy & Fanny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUM

[Neptune]

Yes, giving $2000 to every man, woman, and child in the US would stimulate the economy.  Temporarily.

No, giving $700 Billion to the administration to purchase banks and shore up debt would not stimulate the economy as much as it would slow the painful descent.  Temporarily.

Fundamentally, the economy has been in terrible shape for years.  It has to do with a few things, but beyond the wars fought with borrowed money, and fuel prices rising 300%, and staple foods rising 50% to 75%, this administration failed in one very key domestic area:  technology/jobs.  

The administration started at the end of the techno bubble and it's answer to the end of that economy was "housing" and "hydrogen cars".  "Hydrogen Cars" was a non-starter because of cost, a massed produced hydro car will cost more than a gasoline car to produce, and hydrogen is still projected to be more expensive than gasoline to produce.  In other words, yeah it's cleaner, but it will be far more expensive to purchase and to operate even at $4.00 per gallon in gas prices.  Hydrogen is not likely to ever be widely used, and hydro car production is not likely to ever create a substantial number of jobs.

The problem with Housing is that it takes a ton of credit.  The administration helped deregulate the banking industry further which propped up the housing industry at the cost of bad loans.  Yes it created jobs for the short term, and propped up the economy in the short term, but building was bound to outpace demand and it did just exactly that.  Coupling that to bad loans, lack of quality jobs, jobs fleeing over seas, cost of basic good inflating:  more and more people had less of an ability to pay.  And the only "jobs creation" the administration can be credited with, beyond inflation related jobs like in the oil industry, is virtually gone.

The next administration will hopefully put the US back on the electric/hybrid auto track and push for energy diversification.  Trade needs to be addressed.  It will take a while, but if jobs aren't created any time soon it won't be just the economy that collapses, it'll be the government.  We could be fighting immigration by simply being worse off than Mexico.

[Hawkins]

I'm not a economy major or financial genuis by any stretch, but I am strongly opposed to this bail out garbage.

If we truly live in a capitalist society, we have to let the markets run their course, no matter how painful that can be in the short term.

If these banks go under, won't they eventually be replaced by upcoming smaller banks, who use fundamentally sound lending practices and take less risk?

Maybe F&M Bank would become the next Citibank, am I wrong?

Maybe the luxury brand automobile makers will also suffer, but then wouldn't more people just end up driving a Honda's and Toyota's, rather than Acura's and Lexus'?

Maybe there won't be credit cards with $40,000 limits on them, but such a credit tool was unheard of a few decades ago.

And yet our economy grew back then.

Our economy would shrink now, in the short term, but at least it would gain a solid foothold.

Perhaps we might even find ourselves living in a world where people handle borrowed money in a responsible fashion again, since only responsible people in most cases will be loaned the money in the first place.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by Hawkins

I'm not a economy major or financial genuis by any stretch, but I am strongly opposed to this bail out garbage.

If we truly live in a capitalist society, we have to let the markets run their course, no matter how painful that can be in the short term.

If these banks go under, won't they eventually be replaced by upcoming smaller banks, who use fundamentally sound lending practices and take less risk?

Maybe F&M Bank would become the next Citibank, am I wrong?

Maybe the luxury brand automobile makers will also suffer, but then wouldn't more people just end up driving a Honda's and Toyota's, rather than Acura's and Lexus'?

Maybe there won't be credit cards with $40,000 limits on them, but such a credit tool was unheard of a few decades ago.

And yet our economy grew back then.

Our economy would shrink now, in the short term, but at least it would gain a solid foothold.

Perhaps we might even find ourselves living in a world where people handle borrowed money in a responsible fashion again, since only responsible people in most cases will be loaned the money in the first place.

What you describe would be a world where everything was put in a better, or safer, economic perspective.  Our quest for growth, when it's done in measured paces is admirable.  When we start injecting steroids, chances are, it won't end well.

[Neptune]

quote:Originally posted by Hawkins

I'm not a economy major or financial genuis by any stretch, but I am strongly opposed to this bail out garbage.

The idea of allowing all these banks to collapse, relies on one over-simplistic notion: our economy is fine, except for the banks (aka the fundamentals of our economy are strong).

Here's a question to ask yourself.  How is it possible that the housing industry single-handedly made the banking industry fail?  My answer is this: We have failed to diversify our economy, and the only reason this didn't happen quicker is because we allowed the banks to write bad loans.  Period.

Our bad loans made this economy at least "appear to be" functioning.  What kind of economy were the loans covering up?  We aren't fully aware of how bad it is yet.

This is our fault, we over-simplify the economy.  We allow industries, we even allow service industries, to go over-seas then we replace them with what?  More service industries?  We allow inflation to go on running, because if it doesn't, there won't be enough funds in the system to pay the bills.  We have no "next-thing" economically.  We haven't had that since the end of the tech bubble.

Now we get to pay for our over-simplistic attitudes toward economics.  .

[shadows]

Having been a teenager in the Great Depression and have lived almost ¾ of a century since I would have to surmise that it was one of most awaking events of a new nation that was using the saving of the workers lending to others at a high interest rate.  We were entering into the fallout of the WW1 of uncontrolled greed which brought about a condition of greed to acquire more assets.

There was an overproduction of food which brought the price to where one could not get $5.00 of wholesome eatable food in a peck sack.

You knew your neighbor and the person down the street; greeting them at the buss stop or passing those walking down the street.

You spent leisure at the park or even sitting y our front yard talking to the neighbors sitting in their yards throughout the block.  This was pre-television as well as pre-air-condition which added to outside socialism of neighborhood.  

A home could be bought for as little as $600 dollars and many walked away from them because they could not make the payments.

It would seem the great buyout is no more that of a replay of the great depression where the buyout failure is what is best thing that can help this nation.

The height of stupidity in the changing times is purchasing a new city hall for millions of dollars being prohibited from putting the emblem of the city on it defining it as the city hall.

[Wrinkle]

Only proves it's not our building, we're just paying for it for a few years. Five to be exact. We're paying interest only for five years, just like rent.

When KT is gone, it will remain. But, it will soon enough be even a bigger problem than it is today.

[Neptune]

quote:Originally posted by shadows

Having been a teenager in the Great Depression and have lived almost ¾ of a century since I would have to surmise that it was one of most awaking events of a new nation that was using the saving of the workers lending to others at a high interest rate.  We were entering into the fallout of the WW1 of uncontrolled greed which brought about a condition of greed to acquire more assets.

There was an overproduction of food which brought the price to where one could not get $5.00 of wholesome eatable food in a peck sack.

You knew your neighbor and the person down the street; greeting them at the buss stop or passing those walking down the street.

You spent leisure at the park or even sitting y our front yard talking to the neighbors sitting in their yards throughout the block.  This was pre-television as well as pre-air-condition which added to outside socialism of neighborhood.  

A home could be bought for as little as $600 dollars and many walked away from them because they could not make the payments.

It would seem the great buyout is no more that of a replay of the great depression where the buyout failure is what is best thing that can help this nation.

The height of stupidity in the changing times is purchasing a new city hall for millions of dollars being prohibited from putting the emblem of the city on it defining it as the city hall.

Love the blast from the past.  Good stuff.

Part of what caused the depression to be so bad was the US gov't was only about 3% of the economy, and the gov't was completely incapable of stopping banks from failing.  Now the gov't is about 20% of the economy, and there is no intention of letting that happen again.  Not on that scale.

Just about the best thing that can happen now is for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to never go back to the private sector.  They weren't private to begin with, they were gov't entities.  And subjecting those two to the private sector with the inherent greed and need for "deregulation" is in large part to blame for where we are now.  The private sector sucked Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dry, and they pushed for the deregulation which allowed bad loans.

[Conan71]

Neptune, stop it!  You are making entirely too much sense.  I'm not supposed to agree with you!