Pelosi urges Bush to take action in letter
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sending a letter to President Bush pressuring him to offer a “comprehensive and effective systemic response to ongoing market turmoil.”
Ooooh. Nancy. The mumbo. The jumbo. I love it when you use multiple syllables.
“We need to hear from you about a comprehensive and effective systemic response to ongoing market turmoil — one that will restore stability, grow our economy, create jobs, and insulate hardworking, middle-class Americans on Main Street from Wall Street’s crisis,” Pelosi writes in the letter.
Geez, Nancy is that all? As long as you’re at it, why didn’t you ask for the cure for cancer? Government is the solution for all ills, right. Maybe now would be a good time for everyone to get Hillary’s $5,000?
Translation:
We don’t know what the f*ck we’re doing. Harry Reid is crying in the balcony. The Senator from Illinois isn’t even “Present.” So Mr. President, if you don’t mind, we’d like you to look the fool. Please overlook the fact that it is we that have blocked reform legislation since 1992.
Legislation that may have prevented this debacle in the first place.
She also says Congress will be willing to stay on Capitol Hill beyond the target adjournment date of September 26 to deal with the problem.
Well, we know they will be hanging around for at least two or three days until the President gets his letter.
She used “turmoil” twice! That proves Madame Speaker is in tune with the gravity of the situation. And she also used “systemic” which would indicate a keen grasp of the obvious.
I feel so much better now.
I love the mention of insulating “hardworking, middle-class Americans on Main Street from Wall Street’s crisis”.
Pelosi comes from a wealthy & politically connected Maryland family (her father was mayor of Baltimore). According to the wikipedia she is one of the wealthiest members of congress. Pelosi learned all about “hardworking middle-class Americans” from studying about them in college, I guess.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/19/business/main4459686.shtml
You see, in a market place where consumers get screwed by oil speculation, that’s fine, but when big Wall Street fat cats start taking it in the shorts because of speculation, well, it’s time to STOP THE SHORT SELLER.
Well, I guess if the GOP is now running as the party that wants to nationalize the private sector, they might as well try to sell themselves as the party of strict Federal regulation of private finance.
You guys still for gun rights and against abortion? Just checking.
You see, in a market place where consumers get screwed by oil speculation, that’s fine, but when big Wall Street fat cats start taking it in the shorts because of speculation
The two issues are unrelated. I doubt I can lower the explanation of why to your level. So try, I will not.
Someone needs to up your medication again.
“Fat cats” AND “taking it in the shorts.”
Peev is actually Nick Coleman, isn’t he?
BTW, Roosh, where exactly were the Republicans on Fannie Mae reform from 1994-2000, when they HAD majorities and Frank couldn’t have stopped anything?
Where were they from 2001 – 2007? Again.. crickets..
The FACT is Bush was warned by many people as early as 2001 of the coming potential crisis, and did nothing. He was warned in 2006 of the massive debt in Fannie Mae, again, he did NOTHING.
Blaming Democrats is all you seem capable of, so much for personal responsibility. Where was the outrage at the massive debts incurred by the Bush Administration fighting an unecessary war, doling out massive checks to KBR?
Crickets again..
Peev:
“Blaming Democrats is all you seem capable of…”
What would happen if I were to change the word Democrats with Republicans? To whom could I say that phrase?
Hmmm, I wonder. Who would fit the bill?
Crickets again.
Badda,
I believe you’ve been told repeatedly that you’re not going to get replies until you add something constructive to a conversation, so it’s not crickets, it’s that you’re not worth spending breath on. Unlike you, I’ve frequently blamed democrats for things, I certainly don’t have to prove my bonafides to you – yet, as is ALWAYS the case with you nutcups, you attack the messengaer – because it’s all you’ve got. Your complaint is utter bullshit.
Roosh,
In 1999 Phil Grams (also know as Phil Gramstander) gutted the banking regulations prohibiting, among other things, the crossover between insurance and banking products, as well as several other banking restrictions.
If you want to find some blame, look to McCain’s former campaign manager – and (as a salve to Badda’s idiocy) the other Democrats who voted with Grams in 1999. There were more than a few. Perhaps what you’ll eventually grasp is that Republicans have been FAR too cozy with business, have stood idley by while the Government became Wall Street (and the Defense industries) unending checkbook, and Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, went along often enough that the difference is negligible. But to try to pin this SOLELY on Democrats is utter crap. If anything, the Republicans lead the way, guys like Grams for example, and the Democrats went along, because they all got big fat campaign contributions, while the middle-class got screwed. The promised trickle down never came – your economic policy was a sham – a sham designed (not by you) to funnel the public treasury into the hands of the ultra-rich. That has worked, and now all of us hold the bag. It sure as hell wasn’t Barney Frank who brought that about, pretending it was, is a lie.
The proper response to Peev’s latest outburst can only be a bit of Poetry. Not mine, but T.S. Eliot’s:
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
J –
As a refresher –
The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).
After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised “poor judgment”.
I worked for Glen in 1984 – I did not back him in any way again after this scandal. This was 4 Dems and 1 Republican doing something unethical – my only comment – you all have blinders on regarding McCain.
Terry – if the facts don’t fit, I guess it’s just attack the message and messenger, eh? What’s the matter, got nothing better?
You know damned well I’ve criticized Dems – but where is your condemnation of McCain for hiring Grams? Oh, yeah, that’s right, it’s TOTALLY MISSING.
The short seller offers to sell a buyer X in the future with the price settled on today. The seller hopes that the value of X goes down between today & the date the sale actually takes place so he can make a nice profit.
Since the buyer knows this he is gambling his money on the idea that the value of X will be larger on the date of the sale, what is the problem? This is information that a free market needs to work properly in assessing the value of X.
Terry,
They stopped allowing short selling because it was causing a run on confidence in the stock market. Large volume of short sell makes the rest of ‘the herd’ worry.
What is necessary to understand is that the market isn’t a bunch of bright people making bright decisions, it’s a bunch of parasites making decisions based upon very often, poor instincts or mass hysteria. If 2000 people spend 20 Billion, the other 1000 look and wonder what they’re missing.
And Terry,
I’d gladly be likened to a poem by T.S. Elliot than be a participant in the Chicken Dance (like those on Wall Street) who simply start strutting around flapping their wings because the music starts playing.
Or.. like many of the nutcups of the Republican party who simply mouth whatever idiot rant flows from the likes of Limbaugh and Rove…
Let me help.. flap flap flap, clap clap clap.. come on, I know you know the tune.
Oh, sorry, and just this for a little reminder
The reason for regulation isn’t to regulate entities in good times, but to prevent fraud, and most importatly, catastrophe in bad times.
Free Market – if there is such a thing – is fine, but it allows for disasterous results when not overseen – as companies will pursue what seem like good ideas into infinity/oblivion, and drag the rest of the economy down with them. THAT’s the reason for oversight, to avoid catastrophe when the market turns. I do understand you nutcups don’t get that, but it’s still sound logic nevertheless. Had we ‘allowed’ the free market to work – allowed banks to fully dergulate – require no capitalization, require no fiduciary control – allow Fannie Mae to fail, it would be 1929 all over again. In fact, what has lead us here has been the deregulation itself, when we allowed for inter-state banking, banking investment products like ‘credit swaps’, which were prohibited before 1982. Our interest in turning what were supposed to be ‘safe havens’ for local investments in communities into uber-large national investment houses is PRECISELY what has brought this about. People should be investing in stocks directly – not banks – if they want high returns. Instead we incented CEO’s (at their request I might add) to generate high returns, higher asset value – and removed the barriers between banks and true investment companies. Now, as with Lehman Bank, the parent’s insolvency is ruining the fully sound Bank’s deposit base.
Free Markets have wild, unpredicatable and catastrophic results when greed is the primary motivation and no one is watching the hen house. Your solution seems to be that instead of reigning that in a little, we should INSTEAD return to 1928, and simply TRUST that people who have no incentive to do other than take high risks for high reward, will not do so. I think we’ve tried that, it did not work.
Peev, the justification for Gramm’s legislation was that the financial market was lopsided because people put their money in banks when market returns were low and in stocks when market returns were high. Gramms is a doctrinaire free-marketeer and the idea behind the deregulation was that there should be as few barriers to the movement of capital between markets as possible. Is your problem with the free market or with this particular piece of (very complex) legislation?
Penigma,
Just wondering…do you have a job? Or do you just work nights?
Peev-
Who are your “overseers”? And how do they have a better ability to know the value of something than the market?
Just cause it is so true –
bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/09/the-new-new-dea.html#comments
“We now see that the grand experiment of deregulation has ended, and ended badly. The deregulation movement is now an historical footnote, just another interest group, and once in power they turned into socialists. Indeed, judging by the actions of the conservatives in power, and not the empty rhetoric that comes out of think tanks, the conservative movement has effectively turned the United States into a massive Socialist state, an appendage of Communist Russia, China and Venezuela. ”
Save capitalism, vote DFL
Peev in attack mode:
“…as is ALWAYS the case with you nutcups, you attack the messengaer – because it’s all you’ve got. Your complaint is utter bullshit.”
Your comment, the one I responded to, was an attack. Your response to my response, as anyone can see, is an attack.
Peev on the hook:
“…you’re not worth spending breath on.”
While that might be true, you don’t really live by your words at all.
Peev in I-don’t-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means mode:
“Unlike you, I’ve frequently blamed democrats for things…”
Actually, I think 1) you’ll find I’ve blamed some Democrats, 2) I’ve also blamed Republicans… and it is odd that you never ever seem to notice. I know the Interweb is a pretty big place, but you can find it out there.
If you ever bothered to look.
Douchebag. (Now THAT’S an attack.)
Well there’s a half hour of my life I was able to avoid wasting, thanks to my good friend Page Down.
From the single paragraph you quoted, RickDFL, I can tell that the writer is an idiot. He thinks conservatism & the GOP are the same thing.
Terry:
“He thinks conservatism & the GOP are the same thing. ”
I used to hear the same thing about Communism and the Soviet Union. I did not believe it then either.
So why did you quote the paragraph, RickDFL? A more apt comparison would be Clinton’s endorsement of welfare reform signifying “the end of liberalism’.
Terry:
Yes it is very apt to consider changing the eligibility requirements for a minor government program, with a trillion dollar bailout and the nationalization of several of the largest financial operations in America. Totally the same thing.
RickDFL, you exaggerate to make a point, because the actual facts don’t support you. The “Largest financial operations in America” are not being nationalized and AFDC, a program that had been around since ’35 — HOLY SHIT! JUST HAD A BIG EARTHQUAKE! — was reformed & renamed.
The earthquake was a 4.2 down by Hilina Pali, about ten miles SSE from where I wrote this.
Terry:
Hope your OK.
Point taken. Nationalized in effect if not in law. But the point remains. The Clinton welfare reform bill was a blip, what happened this week was far more consequential.
The earthquake was more shocking than anything else, short & sharp like a medium sized tree limb had dropped on the roof. All okay here.
This week’s bailout may one day be remembered (if at all) as being as unremarkable as the Chrysler bailout back in ’79.
“as unremarkable as the Chrysler bailout back in ‘79.”
OK color me facinated. What do you base this on, other than wishful thinking? A comparison of the current dollar value of the loans? A market cap comparison?
Great little graphic here.
http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts
The Chyrsler bailout was less than 4 billion in 2008 $s. Bear, Fran/Freddie, and AIG are 300 billion to which we can add Hank’s blank check at 700 billion. So it is like the Bush admin is doing a Chrysler bailout every business day for a year.