The Realist

Real Capitalists Nationalize

"It's time for the Democrats to pass a nationalization in the taxpayers' interest bill and dare Bush to veto it."

That might be the dumbest comment I have seen. Check you facts, Bush and the democrats are ready to pass this bill regardless of what it does. It is the republicans who are the ones stopping this right now. The Democrats can pass any bill they want, they have the majority and Bush's support, so why don't they? Because they know that the country will blame them for passing a horrible bill.

The current bill is just a pay off to bankers and increase government power. If anyone thinks for a moment that is not what the democrats want to do then you are nuts. These people being bailed out are the democrats largest contributors. If you take a second to look at the red/blue stats for NY you will find that while most of the state is red the largest blue area with all the votes in the state is NYC and its surrounding suburbs, all represented by rich bankers. This works perfect for them and Bush as he is an idiot that listens to Paulson who just wants to pay off his friends.

I do like the plan as DeLong sets it out in that it makes the equity and debt holders pay for their mistakes. Those are the real people who need to pay, they did the investing, they took the risk. The original Bush/Dodd/Frank plan would have taken that risk and passed it on to the taxpayer. The bill passed must include that any bank that takes assistance also has its shareholders and bondholders pay for that help.

Everyone who is against the current bailout as originally outlined needs to thank their republican house members who are the ones that held this up. The rank and file has been flooding them with phone calls, faxes and emails and it is working. We can accept a bailout only if it punished those responsible, not the taxpayer.

And while we are on it, what is up with the JPM/WM deal. Did the government just give WM's good parts to JPM for @1.8 bil and let the bondholders eat all the losses. JPM must pay the real price for WM's good assets, it does not sound like they did that here. So the feds let JPM get a steal on WM's good assets and that is money that comes directly from the bondholders. Now don't get me wrong, the bondholders should lose whatever they have lost, but increasing that loss so JPM could get a $10bil asset for $1.8 bil is a joke. All it does is make sure these banks don't do deals until the next one collapses.

Don't Believe the Lies: Ride the Bank Stocks Bull

Buy at your own risk. Believing anything the banks say is crazy. They are magically making their books look better by changing the definition of bad loans. First WFC comes out with better than expected losses because they change delinquent loans from 120 days to 180 days. B of A is giving anyone who asks better terms so that they do not become delinquent.

MER just sold CDOs at 5 cents on the dollar (well 22 cents but they loaned the purchaser 75% of the money with the CDOs as the only collateral). Have the other banks written down their CDOs to 22 cents or the real 5 cents?

As for fools calling a bottom on CNBC, what a joke. Is the July 15th bottom a real bottom or just a bottom like the March bottom they all called. Cramer is a clown. He said one week C was going to single digits then he calls a bank bottom.

Today is options expiration day. Take a look back at when the last run in the banks ended. Yes, end of May, the Monday after options expiration. My assumption is that as usual the market is being manipulated for a short while and will end here.

Financials To Resume Meltdown Momentarily

Are you saying in point 1 that the banks are going down now only because of the short selling rule? It has nothing to do with the fact that these companies are in serious trouble and any one way collapse at any moment? It has nothing to do with billions of loans outstanding that might not be paid back in full? It has nothing to do with having to use what precious little money they have to buy back auction rate securities that they sold by deception?

With at least another year of write offs and to the real estate bottom, a contention that I believe is off by one to two years, why would the market rally in two months? Because it is forward looking and effecient? Just like it was forward looking in Aug-Oct of 2007 when it ran to a new high in the face of the sub prime meltdown?