Althouse: The bailout is in.

October 3, 2008

The bailout is in.

Are you happy about it?

40 comments:

Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...: Too early to tell if it will have an effect at all. Like I said in the other thread, one couldn't tell by looking at the DJ an the other indexes whether the bailout passed or not, not yet anyway. There hasn't been a joyous market rally or anything similar.; 10/3/08, 2:29 PM
Synova said...: I'm becoming accustomed to the feeling of helplessness. There's not a thing I can do but prepare to deal with the fall-out, whatever it is.; 10/3/08, 2:36 PM
Sprezzatura said...: Yikes, too many spineless Althouse folks.

Hopefully that trend will lessen as more folks step up to the poll.; 10/3/08, 2:37 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: I would be happy if the bill prohibited lobbying and campaign contributions from the enitites involved. I will be very happier if DOJ, SEC, and Treasury, individually or combined, open an investigation into the corruption involved between the entities, lobbyists, and elected officials.; 10/3/08, 2:39 PM
Roger J. said...: I'm trying to think of government programs of this size that have been successful--the new deal was in effect until the start of the war, and had reduced unemployment from 30 percent to 20 percent on the eve of pearl harbor. I will leave it for others to determine if it was successful; Ike's interstate highway system; the apollo program. And that about completes my list--the latter two have the advantage of using engineering solutions rather than social solutions. We'll see.; 10/3/08, 2:42 PM
DBrooks17 said...: I might be happy if there were some public beatings involved. My mind drifts back to the caning controversey in Singapore a few years back. Say what you will, I doubt you see much(or any)graffiti in Singapore. That reality should be applied to Congress and Wall Street.; 10/3/08, 2:44 PM
DBrooks17 said...: Controversy; 10/3/08, 2:45 PM
Simon said...: I don't really care as long as it redounds to McCain's benefit. I don't know that it will, but I really don't care at this point what happens so long as on balance it's a net plus for the GOP ticket. If it fails and that can be played to McCain's benefit, six months of recession is a lot better than four years of an Obama administration and the carnage it will unleash.; 10/3/08, 2:47 PM
Lorelei Leigh said...: My problem with the bailout (er, rescue) is that everyone thinks it's bad, yet everyone supports it because it amounts to "doing something." I'd rather them take the time to get it right rather than just do any old thing just so they can look like they're being proactive.

Only time will tell whether what they passed will actually work.; 10/3/08, 3:09 PM
P_J said...: I'm not crazy about either, but I definitely liked the first package better, before both parties got to lard the bill up with expensive and irrelevant pork.; 10/3/08, 3:12 PM
Simon said...: Lorelei Leigh said...
"[E]veryone supports it because it amounts to 'doing something' ... so they can look like they're being proactive."

I agree. Smoot-Hawley was "doing something" too; you'd think they'd have learned their lesson.; 10/3/08, 3:25 PM
Joe said...: My problem with the second bill is that it contained several provisions that I believe should have been passed just on their own and would have done a great deal toward solving this.

If this works, all that will be forgotten and this only reinforce congress's view that throwing money at a problem solves it. Even worse, if it doesn't work, the argument will be that they didn't throw enough money at it.; 10/3/08, 3:32 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I definitely liked the first package better, before both parties got to lard the bill up with expensive and irrelevant pork.

And how dare they. It's bad enough that we have to pay for this thing, and then they go and tack on all their special pet projects. Really pisses me off.; 10/3/08, 3:56 PM
blake said...: Wait, DBQ, weren't you in here stumping for a bailout for the past several days?; 10/3/08, 4:01 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: And there's this:

Following Monday's vote, Senate leaders quickly took custody of the measure, adding on $110 billion in tax and spending provisions designed to attract additional support, then grafting on legislation mandating broader mental health coverage in the insurance industry.

Great! Aside from $110 billion in random junk, they tacked on legislation that will make everyone's insurance more expensive. Awesome.

I'm not sure that you can be sane without despising bureaucrats.; 10/3/08, 4:04 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Ha. On the last page I linked, there was an ad for one of those online IQ tests. The ad said that Biden's IQ is 146. Heh. He wishes.; 10/3/08, 4:08 PM
ricpic said...: I was against it till they put in that subsidy for wooden arrow manufacturers. Now I'm completely for it.; 10/3/08, 4:12 PM
AllenS said...: No. Having said that, I'm going to the bar. See ya.; 10/3/08, 4:30 PM
PJ said...: Is there anything these people won't exploit for shabby political gain? A pox on them all.

My only hope for a silver lining (a faint one) is that even President Obama might think it too reckless to add nationalization of health care to this load on the tapped-out taxpayer.; 10/3/08, 4:35 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Wait, DBQ, weren't you in here stumping for a bailout for the past several days?

No. The "bail out" that they have structured won't work. Too expensive, cteates a new government agency that will never go away and doesn't really solve the problem. I did point out that if they did purchase the derivatives that there might be some gain in reselling when the market is better able to accept those.

My preference is for a change in the mark to market accounting for banks, which it seems that they have included, and a holiday or temporary suspension of capital gains taxes. If they did those two things it would bring liquidity to the market and not cost 700 billion taxpayer dollars.

This bill is cumbersome, too many regulations and has too many gimmies in it.

Mark my words. It won't work and we will still have to pony up more money.; 10/3/08, 4:41 PM
chickelit said...: I still believe it is fleece for our time.; 10/3/08, 4:42 PM
blake said...: Mark my words. It won't work and we will still have to pony up more money.

I suppose we couldn't just stop everything and start over.

No, not the bill. The government.

Just the Declaration and the Constitution. Erase everything else.

Anyone?; 10/3/08, 5:04 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm trying to think of a way to go broke and have the Property Manager renegotiate my loan principal and interest rate.

Register Democrat maybe?

Or maybe I'll just start putting a little cash in a safe place.; 10/3/08, 5:12 PM
bearbee said...: Graphic on failure/absorptions/mergers of financial institutions.; 10/3/08, 5:17 PM
Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/3/08, 5:42 PM
Unknown said...: I was against it till they put in that subsidy for wooden arrow manufacturers. Now I'm completely for it.

I do not dispute that this bill really was a huge crap sandwich, and that there was a lot of irrelevant BS added to the bill. But it does seem that perhaps the wooden arrow thing has been blownout of proportion.; 10/3/08, 5:43 PM
Unknown said...: Oops, missed a space there.

Anyway, an interesting thing has happened to me this week as a result of all this economic turmoil: I find that I am far, far less interested in who wins the Presidential election. Yes, I have my preference, and yes, I enjoyed Palin's performance yesterday.

But I kind of think that it amounts to a hill of beans compared to the potential for economic disaster. Relative to that, either president will be a walk in the park.; 10/3/08, 5:45 PM
bearbee said...: I wrote to my senators complaining about the pork attached to the bailout, One senator (guess which party) sent boilerplate laying blame to the past 8 years of deregulation and deference to wallstreet. No mention congressional oversight failures. No mention of the added pork.

Still waiting for Mr. Republican to respond.

Bastards.; 10/3/08, 6:02 PM
bearbee said...: How Government Stoked the Mania; 10/3/08, 6:18 PM
Anonymous said...: I cannot find words that sufficiently express my anger with both political parties.

The bill that will ostensibly rescue the American economy from the excesses caused by overspending was larded up with excess spending.

Neither party will take responsibility for the immense national debt, nor will they for the continuous budget deficit. Both parties delight in blaming everyone else, as if the earmarks sprang magically from dust.

The earmark process is corruption in its worst form. The earmarkers are not obligated to identify themselves; their confiscating of our money is without accountability, except at election time when it can all be blamed on whoever is president at the time.

If I could wave a wand, all incumbents would be swept form office, save for a very few who have taken principled positions in opposition of earmarks.; 10/3/08, 7:35 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: Michael_H said...
I cannot find words that sufficiently express my anger with both political parties.

It is time to deswtroy the two party system and get more parties involved. If this keeps up, we are doomed.; 10/3/08, 8:05 PM
William said...: Most of the 1.2 trillion dollars that was lost last Monday was mine. I am totally punked out about this whole capitalism thing. Can anyone put me in touch with a good Communist cell....The credit default swaps were orginally designed as an instrument for managing risk. Instead they became the greatest risk leveraging instrument since tulip bulbs. I fear that this bailout will have as many unintended consequences as CDS's....I have not heard anyone give a lucid explanation of this plan. I am not sure if this is because, like a particle accelerator, I don't have the vocabulary to understand it or, alternately, because the mechanism, like a perpetual motion machine, defies known laws of gravity....Well, America achieved greatness by defyiing gravity; perhaps we can do it again.; 10/3/08, 11:32 PM
Wince said...: The whole premise of this plan is that the govt is competent and ethical enough to be trusted to recoup this money by transacting prices advantageous to the taxpayer in the buying and selling of these assets.

The inclusion of pork belies that belief.; 10/4/08, 3:14 AM
vbspurs said...: No.

DBQ, why! You threw me here. I was leaning for it given your (and other's who deal in the sector) impassioned rhetoric these past two weeks.

Cheers,
Victoria; 10/4/08, 3:43 AM
vbspurs said...: This bill is cumbersome, too many regulations and has too many gimmies in it.

Mark my words. It won't work and we will still have to pony up more money.

Oh I see...well, fudge. I feel completely unhappy now, after a restful Friday thinking we were, if not out of the woods, at least out of grandma's bed.

Cheers,
Victoria; 10/4/08, 3:45 AM
Anonymous said...: We had dinner tonight with an old friend who used to be head of securities for a large regional bank in the South. He quit that job because his wife wanted to move back to Boston to start their now-large family. This is an example of why you can't keep Boston people from coming home to this cozy part of the world. He's a New Yorker, so coziness is not terribly important to his way of thinking. But he's also independent-minded, and has been happy enough to step out of the rat-race and make money purely for himself. However they came to be here, we're very glad to have them and their family as friends and neighbors.

So, he's a brilliant guy, and just about the only one I know who has made a good living in the equities markets as a pure investor. Here're a few points I gleaned from him over too many glasses of Cabernet last night:

1. Anybody who knew anything has been very worried about mortgage-backed securities for a long time. There is plenty of blame to go around, both politically and financially. Barney Frank, for example, is a lying scumbag, but so are plenty of people you've never heard of in the financial world.

2. The change in mark to market accounting rules for banks, and the TEMPORARY suspension of capital gains taxes, mentioned by Dust Bunny Queen above, are good ideas in themselves, but probably not enough to prevent the serious going over a cliff in the short run. The very flawed bailout bill may have, but it won't solve the underlying problems.

3. It's all very nice Ben Bernanke has his computer model, which predicted doom, etc. My friend has his models, too, and those accurately told him when to move heavily to cash some time ago. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to extract himself until May, by which time he had lost 30 times the $17,000 I was complaining about losing around here last Tuesday. Moral: Computer models can be wonderful, but it's the ability to apply the data that counts. Despite technology, it's entirely possible to get screwed.

4. We are looking at a 15-18 month bear market. Most people would be better off in cash, IF they had bailed early this past Spring. Otherwise, ride it out, and start sniffing for lows in about 14 months. A T-bill money market fund is the best place to park your cash right now.

5. Medium-term, we're probably in for a repeat of the late 70's, with inflation the time-honored way to clear massive public debt. Given our grotesque and never-ending current account deficit, inflating our way out looks very likely.

6. Obama will be the President. The Republicans have blown it and are a spent force for the forseeable future.; 10/4/08, 6:02 AM
bearbee said...: I feel completely unhappy now...

Here is young Barbra to convince you that Happy Days are Here Again

There now, does that make you feel happy again? Then write to congress and let them know.; 10/4/08, 7:24 AM
bearbee said...: This year:

$150 billion January stimulus package
$300 billion July homeowner bailout package
$700 billion Oct financail bailout aka rescue package.

Federal Reserve balance sheet in six weeks has gone from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion.

Still more to came when the corporate credit default swaps hit the fan.; 10/4/08, 9:22 AM
Anonymous said...: "The very flawed bailout bill may have, but it won't solve the underlying problems."

As long as we keep making loans to people who can't pay them back, we are institutionalizing a permanent crisis. So far no one talks about this because they fear being called racists. Supposedly McCain is going to go nuclear on this issue next week. Yeah, right.

Where will it all end? I predict Obama wins, a new terror attack to test the new "nice" president, and a serious recession/depression all blamed on inheriting Bush's mistakes.; 10/4/08, 11:22 AM
bearbee said...: Check out this brief video on what the bailout bill looked when first proposed to what it became 10 days later.
Bailput package; 10/4/08, 2:04 PM