huskerbob

Exclusive: Big Banks' Recent Profitability Due to AIG Scam?

Was this all a scam from the start? Certainly GS and friends weren't dumb enough to think that AIG had enough assets to cover all the protection they were selling, or would be able to honor a fraction of it without going under. So where did they expect the money to come from?

Why Goldman Sachs Should Return Its TARP Money

I doubt that goldman sachs relationship with our government has been so stormy, as you say. With their former CEO running Treasury? Are you kidding?
They have their billions funneled through AIG, and will now get to play with money leveraged by tax dollars. I don't think they will "put pressure on other firms to get healthy fast", it will put pressure on them to hire more and better connected lobbyists. GS got better because it's hogging all the medicine.

Paying the AIG Bonuses - The Alternative Is Worse

Roy McKoi makes a good point: how smart do you need to be to writes checks to the banks on the winning side of these contracts? Goldman Sachs is getting paid 100%.
Please get these bonuses rescinded so we can move on to focus on more egregious problems. Frank and friends are just setting AIGer's up so the hoi polloi can vent their anger at someone other than congress or GS. In 1930's Germany the politicians blamed the Jews. Our gang is no less scrupulous when it comes to finding a scapegoat. When this blows over they will villify someone else.

10 Reasons Why We Still Haven't Hit Bottom

Great article, many good points.
On point #2, the Fed can't fix liquidity on the lending side, they can only make money so cheap that they give it away to anyone with a pulse. Which is partially how we reached this point. Maybe the market will bottom when the government, not the investor, capitulates.

The Economy on Dope: Investors Fear Inflation, Embrace Gold

Bravo! Excellent article. Expect a lot of vitriol from Paulson and Bernanke sycophants who somehow find genius in making our own Japanese lost decade, albeit on a scale almost unimaginable.
You made a good point that people are abandoning the twilight zone economy for things of more substance: energy, gold, medicine, food.
The lot represented by Paulson and Bernanke, alchemists who tried to make something from nothing and destroyed the economy doing it, are on their way out. Expect them to make an even bigger mess of things before they are thrown on the sh#t heap of history.

White-Hot Mad over AIG

K-9: Are you being facetious when you write: "we have to pay first if we want to have any chance of avoiding the kind of unemployment, bankrupt businesses and overall economic turmoil that our initial and likely, additional capital infusions, may possibly ward off."?
Or are you seriously looking forward to low unemployment, few bankruptcies, and no economic turmoil in the next few years? All thanks to the organized looting of our treasury.

The Greatest Short Sale in History

I have discovered a potential source of liquidity for our poor beleaguered financials. Why not let all of the idiots who are praising this bailout join in any auction for these craptastic chunks of debt? Apparently there is a ready and willing market made up of individual morons who think the purchase of these non-performing assets is a wonderful idea. There are many comments pointing out how the government will make the money back, and perhaps even profit! So why not join in the purchasing of these extremely underrated debt vehicles! After all, it's absolutely necessary that we take them off the poor corporations' hands.
And it must be the only viable solution out there, as it is the only option being considered right now.
I would prefer my tax dollars and any new pretend monies go towards roads, education, maybe a new WPA. We may be needing it soon.