What Taxpayers Get From the Bear Stearns 'Bailout'

Your arguement is completely flawed

Your argument is completely flawed in that it assumes that the fed will be successful in preventing a financial collapse. Given the size of the problem (several trillion dollars in bad loans) and the fed's track record so far, that is an unrealistic expectation.

Assume for one second that the financial collapse IS inevitable. If that is the case, then all the feds bailouts achieve is a redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest Americans. Billionaires get money in their pockets and middle class have the purchasing power destroyed by inflation.

Welfare for the rich on the back of the poor during the worst recession in decades is odiously wrong. Have you even considered how crippling life will become for ordinary Americans should the fed continue its vein attempts to fight an inevitable financial collapse?

Summary: odds are that the fed can't stop the credit implosion, but it can put billions of taxpayer dollars into pockets of billionaires (who will promptly put that money into euros as a dollar crisis devalues the middle class into poverty.)

Is Bear Healthy or Insolvent?

Where's the answer to the most important question? Or does anyone even bother to ask? Is Bear a healthy bank that suffers a temporary run, or it's basically insolvent (a.k.a. Northern Rock?)

If it's insolvent, the bailout is obvious wrong. I also don't buy the argument that those securities can't be valued - I'm a formal financial engineer myself and you should be able to:

1) mark-to-market - at least get a picture of how big the hole is. $30B? $29B?

2) for those securities whose mark-to-market value doesn't agree to your model, you can always un-tangle them and get the intrinsic value. Unless, of course, the security involved are really just piles of junks under disguise, and your so-called model turned out to be just a bunch of 29 years old trader's jerry-rigged Excel spreadsheet formulas (don't laugh, I've seen billions worth of securities being priced like this).

Did the Fed/Bear/JPM do the above home works? Where's the truth then? Why there are two numbers: Fed $30B & JPM $1B stop loss? Why can't JPM take the $30B loss should it occur? Should the same asymmetrical risk taking now applies to BoA and Countrywide? e.g. BoA can pay $1B and take additional $1B loss, and Fannie/Freddi will eat the rest of $100B Countrywide loss?

Felony Pyramid Schemes Called Capitalism

Hi!

Lets take folks OUTSIDE-OF the felony called capitalism, instead of CONTINUOUSLY and EVERYWHERE talking about the arguing going-on inside. Can we? Or will I be censored? Lets find out.

Readers, you DO see the pyramid scheme symbol on the back of the USA one dollar bill, right? You DO see the servitude infestation in capitalism, right? And do you see the "pay up or lose your wellbeing" Chicago mob-like felony extortion widespread within capitalism? Do you see the "join or starve" felony extortion done to the 18 year olds... by this ugly competer's church called capitalism?

See how forcing competer's religions onto 18 year olds (get a job!!!)... kills membership in the cooperator's church (Christianity/socialism)?? Do you understand that AmWay (American Way) (New World Order) got "the exclusive" on the TYPE of survival coupons (money) accepted in supply depots (stores) and leverages 18 years olds into the organization via that felony activity as well?

Do you understand how farmyard pyramids work... from your childhood?? Remember?? Upper 1/3 are "heads in the clouds" while the kids on the bottom ALWAYS GET HURT from the weight of the world's knees in their backs? Still with me?

Do you see anything illegal, immoral, or just plain sick... in any of this pyramid scheme's activities?

Us American Christian socialists are still patiently awaiting the natural fall of the pyramid-o-servitude, or the busting of the free marketeers felony... by the USA Dept of Justice. Us Christians are VERY CLOSE to issuing a cease and desist order on capitalism... until the servitude and inequality goes away... which means it turns into a commune. Commune is a word we LOVE when used in the word "community"... but its one the caps HATE when used in the term "commune-ism". Go fig. PROGRAMMED!!

Time to level the felony pyramid scheme called capitalism. Abolish economies and ownershipism worldwide, and hurry. Economies just cause rat-racing, and rat-racing causes felony pyramiding. BUST IT, America! Look to the USA military supply/survival system... for socialism and morals done right. Equal, owner-less, money-less, bill-less, timecard-less, luxury-repositoried, and concerned with growth of value-criteria OTHER THAN money-value. There are MANY measurement criteria of "value"... not just dollars. Try morals, efficiency, discrimination-levels, repairability, etc etc. Economies are cancerous tumors, and to cheer for their growth... is just insane. Profiting causes inflation, so if capitalists LIKE inflation, and if caps LIKE a terrible time in afterlife when they meet the planet's ORIGINAL OWNER before SOMETHING tried to squat it all with ownershipism, then keep it up with the felony pyramiding. I dare you.

While us Christians are finally bulldozing that pyramid scheme back to level, lets ALL make servitude and "join or starve" illegal in the USA, and lets level the architecture seen in USA courtrooms, too. Right now, USA courtrooms are church simulators or "fear chambers", by special design. Sick.

Take care, everyone.

Larry "Wingnut" Wendlandt

MaStars - Mothers Against Stuff That Ain't Right

(anti-capitalism-ists)

Bessemer MI USA

Is citizensihp conditional on having a mortgage?

"the effect would immediately have hit the pockets of American homeowners."

So, despite being born on US soil to two US citizens, my decision not to obtain a mortgage (in part due to my age) means I'm less of an American? That the government does not represent my interests?

These bailouts and the government's intervention on behalf of existing "homeowners*" at the expense of all taxpayers and on potential future house buyers such of myself amount to TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY.

*A highly inaccurate term in the era of low-down payments, interest-only mortgages, and HELOCs

Bailout for folks who are bad at math...

You know, I can't help but remember how much smug was floating around here in San Diego what with people gloating about how smart they were and how I was an idiot for not buying a home blah blah blah...

Basically, these people (lemmings) kept buying ridiculously overpriced houses and telling me how they would continue to appreciate etc and I had to jump on the bus. So here is the bottom line lesson for folks out there. Something is *ONLY* worth what someone/everyone is willing to pay for it at that time. In other words, these same lemmings managed to keep housing prices so high through their idiotic actions that I could not buy a house.

Now that the housing prices have/are/will collapse (I give it at least one more year to correct) I still could not buy a house since nobody wants to loan any money. On top of that, I am being forced (I was never asked) to bail out Bear Stearns. That is about as ridiculous as me expecting my business to be bailed out if I am stupid. For all the talk of "Free Markets" and capitalism by radio talk show hosts who will remain nameless (1/2 their names tied behind my back just to make it fair), I am starting to realize what all the hoopla is about:

That warm feeling down your back is what "Trickle down economics" is all about....

How about bailing out single mother who can't feed their children!

"The Fed has extended a loan, not given away money." - The Fed is "loaning" $29 billion dollars to JPMorgan? How about "loaning" some money to single moms like Jessica McGreevy in New York or Patricia Guerrero in California; two middle class mothers struggling to feed their families after being laid off.

This administrations policies; while coming to the aid of multi-billion dollar companies, are tearing apart middle-class America.

I fear more of the same under John McCain.

effect on india ?

hi

will there be recession in india and job cuts in india also due to us recession?

Not to defend the bailout, but...

Even if you rent, the solvency of the mortgage industry still benefits you. A scarcity of low-end credit can create a glut of renters, pushing rents upward.

But the really outrageous thing is that government now appears to be a tool for conducting multi-billion dollar business transactions. That isn't the way it's supposed to be, is it? Should taxpayers be forced into making a deal with JP Morgan that no sane private firm would make?

The Solvency of the Mortgage Industry and renters

I can see there might be additional strain on rents at some levels, however,

rents and housing prices usually do not stay apart all that long. When housing prices crash, rents usually follow.

The people who walk away from their mortgages will have a very difficult time

renting due to credit histories. Those who cannot buy homes are already renting or

in a smaller home. As a renter, I am thinking it let it crash to where it should have been. No bailout.