Forum Post: Do you idiots realize that Chase paid back every penny of bailout money plus $800MM in interest?
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 14, 2011, 3:14 p.m. EST by thesenior
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Do you idiots realize that Chase paid back every penny of bailout money plus $800MM in interest?
As soon as I read "idiot" I know that you are one.
I am more upset with Chase and all the other Financial Institutions for corrupting our political process. They paid it back. Fine. Great. Now what are we going to do so they cannot crash our economy again with their market manipulations?
How about we start by people like you and me not taking excessive loans out on our homes to buy sports cars and computers and trips around the world?
That's how we got into this mess, we took out equity loans and home loans we had no way in hell of being able to pay back.
You want to point your finger as to why banks ran our of money, because us average Americans borrowed it to spoil ourselves with stuff we couldn't really afford.
We stopped paying and going bankrupt and then the banks did. Why did we borrow what we couldn't pay back huh? Before you point the finger at banks, point it at ourselves first. We caused it.
WE did not cause it.
Banks allowed it. AND made money off of it.
I know something about business law. A business has a higher legal burden in regards to dealing with a customer. A customer is not a plumber, doctor or lawyer. So plumbers, doctors and lawyers, if sued by a customer, have to prove before a court that they did not take advantage of their customer.
I'm not happy with people who borrowed more than they could afford to pay back. But how about all the people who have lost, are losing and may lose their homes because their job was outsourced or laid off because their employer was under economic stress? People like me who never took money out of their home, never borrowed more than they could expect to pay back? My job just informed us they are outsourcing our jobs by the end of the year. We should be able to make our payments but what about our children's swim team, Boy Scouts, health care? These are what I would consider necessities.
To lay this blame only on the public just shows me how ill informed you are.
think derivitives
Banks repaying the bailout earns them no great kudos. Do I get a trophy for paying my rent on time? No, I get to stay in my apartment for paying the rent on time. We're not asking to burn the places to the ground, sweep the ashes into a heap, and scatter the dust to the four winds -- we want them held responsible.
Financial institutions were massively responsible for playing hot potato with bad faith loans. It went like this: banks make loans that are guaranteed to flop, put them in a portfolio, and hand them off to other companies willing to take the risk. Repeat this a few hundred times until said portfolio has touched so many scattered assets that nobody can pedigree the damn thing. When it flops...refinance and start all over! This rapid-fire shifting happened until a lot of our previously "secure" investments were impacted.
Yes, I'm happy they repaid the money we loaned them (at absolute sweetheart rates). I'm still mad as hell that they put us in that situation to begin with, and there's not a lot stopping them from doing so now, except the fact that nobody has any money to play with.
There's a book called Architects of Ruin you should check out. I'll paste a couple clips here:
In 1994, the young Barack Obama, freshly out of Harvard Law School, joined two other attorneys in filing a lawsuit with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The suit charged Citibank, the giant mortgage lender, with racism because it had denied home loans to several black applicants....Claiming that Citibank had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Thirteenth Amendment (which had abolished slavery), Obama and his fellow attorneys demanded that Citibank pay actual damages, compensatory damages, punitive damages, and (of course) attorney's fees. Citibank denied the charges, arguing that the applicants had been rejected because they had poor credit or were requesting more money than the properties were worth.
....
Some people might dismiss the CRA and the ACORN activists as a distraction. What possible influence could they have on the course of the mighty U.S. economy? Such critics should consider that since 1997, housing activists have forced lending agreements on banks to the tune of $4.2 trillion dollars. (To put that into perspective, the entire annual U.S. gross domestic product is just over $14.5 trillion.) The vast majority of these loans were made in the years running up to the financial implosion of 2008. In 2003, for example, $711 billion worth of agreements were signed. In 2004, that number more than doubled to $1.6 trillion. These skyrocketing numbers, staggering to contemplate, come from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which bills itself as the "nation's trade association for economic justice" and includes six hundred community organizations that have been active in compelling banks to loan money through the CRA. As we will see, these loans were much more likely to fail than traditional mortgages were, in many instances three or four times as likely to lead to foreclosure.
Want more? You got it! (maybe I should put this into a new thread, too)
{part 1} Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer A Failure of Capitalism - or Liberal Social Engineering?
All of this has led Americans to wonder: What happened? How the heck did we get here? Whose fault is it? Who do we blame? What mistakes were made? How can we get out of this mess?
There has been much debate about this question, but the ultimate source of the problem, it is generally agreed - the triggering event that caused the chain of other dominoes to fall - was the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States. Banks and mortgage companies had made trillions of dollars in loans to individuals with terrible credit. They signed loans with illegal immigrants, offered so-called NINJA (No Income, No Job, No Assets) mortgages, and allowed people with bad credit to leverage their money. When the loans began to fail in large numbers, a new term entered our national vocabulary: toxic assets. And so the crisis began. Still, an underlying mystery remained: What explains this perplexing behavior? Were they nuts? Did they simply take leave of their senses?
The conventional narrative was written in the first days of the collapse. And as usual, the loudest, most obstreperous voices seemed to prevail. "The private sector got us into this mess," Congressman Barney Frank indignantly declared as events began to unfold; "the government has to get us out of it." According to this view, deregulation of the banking industry had encouraged the rise of "predatory lenders" who had pushed home loans on people who couldn't afford them. Those loans were then sold to unscrupulous Wall Street financiers, who repackaged them in the form of mortgage-backed securities. The securities were sold in turn to mutual funds, pension funds, and various foreign investors. But their value was grossly overstated and ultimately rested on the faulty assumption that housing prices would keep rising indefinitely. Once again, the supposed result of irresponsible deregulation of financial markets.
This explanation, coming from Frank, had the obvious benefit of pinning the collapse on hispolitical enemies, the Republicans, while completely exonerating any Democrat (such as himself) who had responsibility for overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed lending institutions that traditionally acted as a backstop to the housing market. It is not an accident that Frank has been in the forefront of attempts to minimize the crisis or (when it could no longer be denied) deflect the blame to his opponents. When some conservatives pointed out that Fannie and Freddie had abandoned their sober mission of stabilizing the middle-class housing market in favor of a misguided crusade to expand minority home ownership by forcing banks to lower their lending standards, Frank and his allies brazenly shouted them down. Meanwhile, a chorus of authoritative voices in the press rushed to second the indictment. Nouriel Roubini of New York University blamed "unregulated free market zealotry" for the economic collapse. … Thus Harold Meyerson explained in the Washington Post that "market fundamentalism" had "totally failed" and suggested that we look instead to the German model for a "form of capitalism [which] has proved more sustainable than Wall Street's." Democrats immediately saw the potential of the crisis to tip the scales in favor of more government intervention in the economy. Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton who was now Obama's chief economic adviser, predicted that now "the pendulum will swing - should swing - towards an enhanced role for government in saving the market system from its excesses and inadequacies." White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel declared that it would be a shame to let the crisis go to waste.
Do you know if the rate at which these loans defaulted was higher than the rate at which other (non CRA loans) defaulted? The Financial Crisis Commission says that CRA loan defaults were not a material factor in the crisis.
{part 2} Emanuel had good reason to anticipate success. Coming at the height of the 2008 election, the Wall Street meltdown tipped the balance heavily in favor of Barack Obama, creating a Democrat majority in both houses of Congress and effectively giving the new president a blank check - in his view - to rewrite the American social contract. As a result, the rush to heavy government intervention, new programs, and massive spending was now treated as inevitable. It was the 1930s all over again, and Obama was the new FDR. Free-market economics had been tried and found wanting. Obama referred to its theories dismissively as "failed ideas" and refused to entertain any talk of tax cuts or (God forbid) "doing nothing" in response. To the contrary, the crisis proved that it was time to return to stronger government controls. Anyone standing in the way was seen as part of the political fringe, a die-hard ideologue on par with a Holocaust denier.
This is the self-serving fairy tale propounded by Barack Obama and his allies in Congress and the press. The actual truth about what happened was a much more interesting and complicated – and incriminating - story, too complex to be conveyed in a media sound bite. So it is not surprising that this simplistic story line has become the accepted wisdom. Yet the chorus of liberal triumphalism that sought to usher in a "new" New Deal ignored some inconvenient facts.
The American capitalist system is not unregulated. Given what you have heard in the press, it may surprise you to learn that the banking sector is in fact the most regulated industry in the United States. The nuclear industry is a possible exception.
America has not experienced massive deregulation over the past decade. Strange that his liberal critics should speak of President George W. Bush as a free-market radical, "slashing" and "gutting" regulations. In fact, the Bush administration saw new regulations added to the Federal Register at the rate of a thousand pages a year. If this is deregulation, what would regulation look like?' (Full disclosure: I served as a consultant to the White House Office of Presidential Speechwriting in 2008-2009.)
The federal government did not fail to "police" capitalism. In fact, the opposite is true. The real culprit is not the market but the government; or, more precisely, a socialist distortion of the free market created by the government. Under pressure from liberal activists, the federal government created a series of "protected" markets that were insulated from external economic pressures in order to achieve political ends that could not be realized by other means.
Nor did this happen overnight. It was a massive social engineering project, a grand generational enterprise, thirty years in the making, carried out by an ad hoc alliance of radical activists, labor unions, liberal politicians, federal bureaucrats, and Wall Street financial titans who sought to make getting a mortgage and owning a home a civil right. This is a story that has never been told, mainly because the actual extent of this ambitious multigenerational project has not been fully grasped. But it is vital that we learn it and take its lessons to heart, not just to understand the present crisis but to prevent its ever happening again.
The cast of characters includes three distinct but overlapping groups of people. First came the community activists - idealists such as the young Barack Obama and national organizations such as ACORN - who, beginning in the 1960s, waged war against traditional lending practices in the name of fighting racism and poverty. Inspired by the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky, their tactics were extremely confrontational, and their goals were frankly socialist: to take money from the rich (in this case banks and other lenders) and give it to the poor on very favorable terms, a process that they called "the democratization of capital" but that had more in common with a Mafia protection racket. I refer to this group as the Robin Hood Gang. Still, the fair housing movement would probably have remained a fringe phenomenon had it not been for strong support from liberal politicians in Washington. Beginning in the 1970s, liberal lions such as Senators Ted Kennedy and William Proxmire oversaw the passage of legislation that empowered local activists to force banks into lowering lending standards. The Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses played their part by vociferously demanding new subsidies for poor and minority constituents.
Finally the facts enter the forum! Great post!
{part 3} Finally, a phalanx of powerful liberals, including Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Andrew Cuomo, Janet Reno, Deval Patrick, Henry Cisneros, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, Jon Corzine, and many others less well known, began pushing legislation to encourage or compel banks to make risky loans to individuals who should not have received them. These people were part of the new wave of liberal activists turned political careerists who rose to power with the Clintons. These officials conspired to put the full power of the federal government behind the new civil rights crusade to expand minority home ownership - and often reaped political and financial rewards in the process. (Their resulting ethical problems and conflicts of interest nearly crippled the Obama administration at the outset.) As a result, billions of dollars' worth of loans were made to poor and minority applicants who would never have qualified under traditional lending criteria. Meanwhile, the liberal baby boomers who had risen to the top on Wall Street pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into their efforts through the sale of so-called mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. These bankers, like their cohorts in Washington, believed they could do good and do well by extending credit to aspiring minority home owners via new forms of "creative" finance while at the same time racking up enormous fees and bonuses.
This three-headed movement of activists, liberal politicians, and socially conscious "do-good" capitalists on Wall Street got their wish. During the housing bubble, minorities accounted for twice as many subprime dollars borrowed per capita as did whites. Not surprisingly, the Federal Reserve of Boston found that they defaulted on subprime loans at twice the rate of whites. To be fair, there were other important factors. Many have correctly pointed to the availability of cheap money, brought about by the loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve under Chairman Alan Greenspan, as a major culprit. As Professor John Taylor of Stanford and others have argued, the growth in the money supply created cheap money and helped to inflate the real estate bubble. Greenspan has also been faulted for his policy of letting bubbles inflate and then repairing the damage rather than trying to prevent them. And when the Fed printed more money to increase liquidity as the crisis began, it made things even worse.'
But the heart of the story is the role that radical activists and liberal politicians in Washington played in trying to harness the U.S. financial system to advance their socialist agenda. Properly understood, it is a cautionary tale about the perils of trying to use the power of the state to do good, to help people by giving them a leg up, to "level the playing field." Ironically, such efforts have usually ended up doing the most harm to the very people they were intended to help. The result in this case was no different. This book will illuminate the hubris and impatience of liberal baby boomers who for the most part have spent their careers in government, high finance, and social activism and as a result know almost nothing about how wealth is actually created in the system that has been entrusted to their care. Unlike earlier generations, who valued the free-market system (despite its flaws) for its ability to generate wealth and maximize liberty, the liberal baby boomers - born to affluence, burdened by guilt - saw the capitalist system as inherently flawed and unfair. More important, they saw it as a system that could, and should, be manipulated for "progressive" social purposes. Call it "do-good capitalism": the merging of sixties social values with the rewards of the profit system. The chief buzzwords of this enlightened form of capitalism are the fashionable notions of socially responsible investing and corporate citizenship.
Finally someone who can explain the facts to these people rather than the band wagoners. Thank you.
{part 4} As the liberal boomers rose to power in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, they increasingly sought to harness the engine of capitalism to their vision of a good society. Thus, to further their activist goals, liberals in and out of Washington pushed the federal government deeper and deeper into engagement with the housing market, artificially driving the costs of lending down and pumping the system full of toxic debt.
At the same time, liberals in the Clinton administration entered into an unprecedented partnership with the financial industry that amounted to a form of state capitalism. Under Clinton, a series of Wall Street bailouts taught the big financial houses that if they failed, the federal government would come to their rescue. Almost all of the firms sucked up in the vortex of the financial crisis today were bailed out several times in the previous decade from wildly irresponsible investments. This only had the effect of further corrupting their judgment, inuring them to risks by insulating them from the ruthless discipline of the market.
Why has this story been missed? It isn't all that hard to understand. First, of course, the operations of quasi-governmental agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are shrouded in layers of bureaucratic tedium. Few reporters take the time to actually dig into their inner workings. Besides, they are governed by congressional committees, so people naturally assume that someone responsible is paying attention. Few would have thought that the very politicians charged with overseeing the mortgage giants were themselves liberal activists busily engaged in stampeding them over a cliff.
Second, the housing activists, while certainly loud and annoying, have generally been perceived as a fringe phenomenon, or at best a local problem. How could a bunch of ragged-looking radicals shouting themselves hoarse in front of a bank or city agency present a threat to the global economy?
Finally, there was the big surprise on Wall Street. Most Americans could be forgiven for assuming that the heads of major Wall Street firms were thoroughly rational actors who ran their businesses with a cold eye to profit and the bottom line. The notion that they might have been corrupted by a new kind of government-sponsored capitalism that promised huge rewards for little risk would not have occurred to many people. All of this is vital to understanding how we got into the current mess. It is extremely important that conservatives challenge the political fairy tale that the cause of the collapse was unregulated free-market capitalism. Such a partisan myth, once established in the media, is extremely difficult to dislodge.
But more important, this book is meant to be a cautionary tale - an urgent warning - about what the future will hold in an era of liberal economic dominance. The mortgage meltdown was but the first activist - and government-induced bubble; others will surely follow. We need to be constantly on guard against the liberals' urge to meddle in the economic system, using the power of the state to distort markets in order to advance their social goals.
That being the case, two additional facts should be very disturbing to American taxpayers.
First, the same people who caused the debacle have now been tasked with cleaning it up. The Obama administration is full of Clinton retreads, and they show no signs of having learned anything from the damage they have wrought. Do we really want them to be in charge of redesigning the economic system?
Second, the same cast of characters is busy leveraging state power to manipulate capitalism for their next great social cause: the so-called green economy. Just as occurred in the subprime mortgage crisis, federal authorities and environmental activists are working in tandem, browbeating energy companies and the automotive industry, using the power of the state to compel the creation of carbon-trading schemes and the forced development of green technologies that are simply not profitable. This approach essentially co-opts the regulatory power of the government to create false incentives to invest in green technologies.
Sometimes I do agree that the purpose of government is to help us; citizens and businesses. The bail out sometime sound reasonable to me if you do take into consideration the end result if these banks and car manufactures were allow to fail. Yes, there was much fraud, and many clearly visible red flags that were purposely ignored not only by congress but also regulatory commotions. Who should we blame? But here is other point: What will happen if we do flood the market with huge amounts of currency? It seems that part of the problem is the lack of currency floating around. Some experts defend if you do that you create inflation, but cares about inflation when you do have cash in your pocket
Many of them deliberately put us in the financial fix so that they could buy up other banks for pennies on the dollar, not only should they have paid back tarp money with interest, but they should have cut the US taxpayers in on the billions in profits they made from acquiring new customers in their illegal takeovers that were illegally financed by the people!
Thanks frqet43tq3t, the book looks good. Here are some of my top reads:
Matt Taibbi - "Griftopia"
Nomi Prins - "It Takes a Pillage"
Simon Johnson - "13 Bankers - The Wall Street Takeover" video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8HekexIUy8
John Perkins - "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
These people took Matt Taibbi's article: "The Great American Bubble Machine" and set to video (it is GREAT): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEhQrnKTQk0
Then read Matt Taibbi's article: "The Great American Bubble Machine": http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
There is still a lot that is still unpaid. Google the following General Accounting Office (GAO) report 11-696 dated just a few months ago. It was the one time audit of the federal reserve allowed by congress. Look at page 131. It indicates that 16 TRILLION was loaned to the banks during the crisis through the discount window and a dozen or so other emergency progams. The report details what portions of the loans have been repaid. Chase borrowed $391 Billion. Interestingly Citibank borrowed 2.51 Trillion all by itself. These were all short term loans repaid quickly to increase liquidity but the amounts are staggering. A lot of the bailout money still stands unpaid. See page 4 of the report which shows what still is unpaid. The biggest amount unpaid is what is $909 Billion (nearly a trillion) for what is called agency mortgage backed security purchases. I believe these were the toxic loans taken off the bank's books. Here is the link for the document: www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
National Debt: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
Bernie Sanders office, audits the FED: http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf ... I'm bad, it is the same one you had.
Still makes me wonder if they really, truly needed that bailout money if it was paid back so promptly. I've come to believe the bailout was so that millionaires wouldn't lose a dime for their reckless behavior.
Nice remark. The layers of complexity (and rhetorical manipulations) make these arguments difficult when those involved in the schemes have truly come to believe that they've acted honourably. What I find odd is that the US is in principle opposed to government-owned business but treats banks, transport, and utilities (and to some degree health) as though they were indeed all government owned--at least in times of "crisis"--but then will not regulate the industries (in the name of capitalism) to prevent them from getting into crisis in the first place.
That's a good subject matter you bring up. Probably because they don't wanna bite the hands that feed them. Money has found a way into congress which makes government nothing more than a business itself. Bailouts were approved for banks simply because our very own politicians had their own investments at risk in the financial market.
Once again, who held a gun to our head and said take these loans or die? This mess is our fault because we took loans we couldn't possibly repay. The banks did play hot potatoe with them but they were force by the Fed Govrnment to make them because Clinton got Carter's home loans for poor people programs expanded in the 90s.
Banks had to have a certain percentage of their loans as hose ARM lier loans.
What you are forgetting is the way they were able to pay back the money. They seized the tax payers property. That is why we are so outraged. We funded our own robbery.
:-)
You think they paid the government back by foreclosing on homes? That doesn't even begin to make sense. If that is true, then show us how that was done. Come on, show us. Your can't.
As a homeowner and someone with a mortgage, I would like to see a bank seize my property. Oh, wait, they can't because I bought a home I could afford, for a price that was realistic over the past 15 years and not inflated, and I have paid every mortgage payment on time.
People who were foreclosed hadn't paid their mortgages, bought homes they couldn't afford at grossly inflated prices, and did not have enough savings.
It doesn't make financial sense to a bank to foreclose on a home that is making them money with every mortgage payment.
Right. But thevreason they could not afford the mortgages s because the banks, because of their mismanagement of derivatives, sacked the economy. If the banks had not taken such irresponsible risks, then those mortgages would have been paid. That is the problem.
Nonsense. The reason they couldn’t pay was because we were in a housing bubble that popped and not just the banks caused it. Fan and Fred wanted to promote home ownership so they reduced underwriting standards. People bought homes with no money down. They flipped homes. They got second mortgages. The Fed lowered interest rates. Everybody was along for the ride. Everybody bears responsibility, not just the banks. Look in the mirror.
By the way, the people who put nothing or little down and got foreclosed upon are not the losers. They were essentially just renters. The losers are the responsible people who put say 20% down or had built up equity over time. Even if they still have their homes, they are the losers.
The other big losers, which this group cares not squat about, are the investors in the banks that made the bad loans. Many of these banks went under (e.g., Downey Savings) and the investors got wiped out. This includes not just the holders of common, but also the bondholders. Many of these investors are not the greedy rich. They are widows and orphans who expected banks to be about the safest place to invest their money.
So,the reason the bubble "burst" is because the market was over valued due to credit basically artificially drove up demand, which increased prices? The "burst" was really a market correction? But the banks, knowing that this was what was going on, hedged their bets with derivatives, meaning they were betting against their loans? Or am I still off?
The derivatives crashed because people bought overpriced mc mansions they couldn't afford. The number of people who misrepresented their income and other debt is shocking.. My first home was modest, inexpensive to operate and I loved it an paid off he mortgage.
Many had skin in the credit debacle, the borrowers, the regulators who did nothing, corporation like aig that wrote a mountain of credit default swaps that had no risk management.
How is it at all profitable for a bank to seize property. They like to get paid on the money they loan. It is a major league pain in the ass not to mention wallet to have to resell property at a loss to cover your loans.
In addition, if folks in this country did some personal financial planning and sat down to figure out what they could exactly afford in a house we wouldn't have been in the mess. The problem is that American's are slobs and want to have more than they can afford. It's people like you that have created this hole we are in.
And your are probably upside down on the house also.
Because once a bank seizes the property it becomes an asset, then it can lend 10 to 1 on the perceived value of the house, thus creating earnings potential which raises the overtall value of the bank, then finances the new assets back out. Basically, they took a risk because the rewardvwas attractive enough. Much likevwhy a drug dealer gets involved in the drug trade. When the risk turned out to be toxic, like a drug dealer when he gets caught, rather than take a loss, like a free market dictates, they had the public incur their risk, and ended up profiting nicely off of their, in my opinion, criminal activity. Like when a drug dealer snitches to save his own ass. :)
And, please, let us have a rational debate and steer away from generalizations and name calling. I respect you as an individual, with your rights tonyour opinion, please respect mine. Ibdo notvassume to know you, please do not do the same.
It is an asset but usually is mortagaged beyond its value therefore there is always a loss involved. Inspections, winterizes, legal paperwork, fixing up of the home to be sold, realtor costs, insurance premiums, property taxes, losses on time of holding the property, if needed heating, winterizes, communitu dues. I worked in mortgage forecloseres in a small bank and believe me, it is NOT something that is beneficial! Not to mention the things people do to the homes to distroy it before they leave!!!! I also saw the money games people play to try to get a loan, people wanted it and would worry about how to afford it later!
You knowledge of how the lending process and banking in general is close to zero. The loan on the bank's books was already an asset. When property is foreclosed upon, the note is removed as an asset, the real estate is put into an asset account called "other real estate owned, or OREO". The bank cannot leverage that asset. There are regs that require the sale of the real estate. The proceeds go to, hopefully, pay the bank back for the loan that was never paid.
Why would you say that mumbo jumbo about banks lending 10 to 1 on foreclosed real estate when that isn't even close to the truth. Is that as accurate as a lot of other things that are being said by OWS?
Correct. During and after the foreclosure process, which can take 6 months to years (depending on local backlog and if the person ends up filing for Bankruptcy to delay the forclosure) to gain ownership of a property the bank is losing money on. Thousands of dollars are paid out on a foreclosed property before the property is an REO. The bank pays back taxes. The interest is what the bank was to gain on lending the party money to buy the property. On a foreclosure they loose that gain, plus turn around and assumed huge expenses and flip the house for much less than the value. Their money is all tied up in a property they cant do anything with during the foreclosure process. How do people think the banks gain from this process????? Oh, forgot to menton that the parties who haveto default or decide to default, live in the home without paying their home bill for this lengthy period of time. Who is the problem here???? Who is being taken advantage of???? I think the foreclosure regulations are too leniant and people get away with too much.
Funny how the guy who said banks leverage foreclosed property 10 to 1 doesn't speak up anymore.
Nulambda, not to insult you, but what you are saying is just so wrong, it’s hard to have a rational discussion with you. You say that when a bank seizes a property it becomes an asset. Just what do you think the loan on that property was? The bank doesn’t magically manufacture an asset by foreclosing on a property. You need to think this through. I sure hope your level of understanding of basic economics and banking is not representative of OWS at large.
To everybody who corrected me, thank you. I don't know how correct my thinking, unless I just throw it out there, and let the rest of you help me. I think that is what makes, at leastthisforum, such an open and democratic place. I appreciate it. And thanks again for correcting my ignorance.
As we always do.
The other thing is that the people would have been able to make their payments if the banks had notvcrashed the economy in the first place. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
I don't know about that. They were changing the rules well into the game. I think they crushed deliberately, they cashed in, you know. Maybe they were afraid Occupy Wall Street was coming. But it didn't come, so they said they don't have money, and obviously need more. Then we gave them more money, so they would have some. And people keep coming and paying. I think the banks still can't believe they could pull it off.
I agree. I think it was pre meditated too. But without clear proof it is something I avoid in discussion so that trolls can't use it to divide us.
We can put it like this:
act 1) someone losses an -illion
act 2) he goes and borrows another -illion from the government
act 3) he borrows another -illion from the public and pays back the government
act 4) he gets praised as an honest person for returning his debt
oh, yes
the final act) I just found an -illion under my car seat! What luck!
Except he didn't borrow from the public, they foreclosed on the public... :)
If one finds oneself in the position where he (or she) can almost overnight fix one's family finances for several generations ahead, and not just fix - make them wealthy, yachts and helicopters wealthy, it's a lot of pressure on one's integrity. After all, you can't possibly see the people you rob from South of France.
Agreed. But it is criminal, and when you take an action that is criminal, because the reward is worth the risk, you have to pay for the crime if you are caught. That is the definition of risk. But we are dealing with bankers who ask us to bail them out when the loose to risk. Then tell us to take personal responsibility when they take none themselves. All because of who they are and their family connections with those in power. Of course, that is pulling yourself up by your boot straps, right? :)
lets get away from the home loans and look at credit card debt and how that is handled. people spend, spend spend...then figure out lets file bankruptcy and I can get out of this debt. Who looses. The person used all the banks money and the bank doesnt get that back. Thats why some of the Bk laws were changed to stop people from walking away from their responsibilities. I KNOW, been working in it for 15 years! Bank hold massive amounts of bad credit card debt because of this and how do they make thoses losses up???? The bank bailouts allowed the banks the ability to continue lending, money was tied up. Business would have stopped and new purchased would have ceased....who does that hurt...it hurts ALL people!
Right. I understand. But credit also artificially stimulates the economy. And credit really means borrowing from your future work, to spend now. Eventually, because our future work grows less and less as we keep borrowing against it, our wages become stagnate as prices inflate. So, yes, we have to be responsible with credit. I just think that debt in this nation is really created by how the government and federal reserve create money. The national debt can be seen in the cost of the entire economy. That is how we pay it back. I do not think it was an evil attempt. I think it was an economic experiment that worked in the short term. I just don't think they anticipated the effect of borrowing from future generations. I am assuming that they thought the growth cycle was perpetual, and did not take into account how credit devalues future earning potential from a "real" wages viewpoint. So, I do hold the banks accountable for not using the bail out for debt forgiveness, like we the tax payer gave them. I also think reform in how we generate constant cash flow in the economy is needed.
Question: what do you think the impact of Obama nationalizing the banks after forcing bankruptcy, selling the banks back to the public, debt forgiveness across the bored, and issued a currency backed by the government not federal reserve notes?
So many people have absolutely no clue how the financial system works.
The amount of toxic assets sitting around in portfolios on Wall Street is fucking startling... the problem wasn't fixed, it was pushed further down the road.
The American economy is currently staring down a long 10-20 year road of decline... and the PEOPLE are the ones who are going to be getting screwed along this horrifying path.
The banks were given free money by the government and guess what they did with it... they went straight back to the derivatives markets and start funneling their free government handouts into profiteering campaigns to get THEMSELVES more profits. The unemployment rate is sitting flat because your dickhead banks aren't lending out money, they're happily investing into more profitable and riskier opportunities which ultimately don't benefit civilization in the slightest.
Ever wonder why oil prices fluctuate so much? Speculation.
The markets are completely unpredictable at this point because they don't make any fucking sense. They don't make any fucking sense because these billion dollar hedge funds are moving ridiculous amounts of money around the markets behind the scenes.
They are the shadowy hand that manipulates your economy behind closed doors... to the detriment of the people, and the benefit of the rich.
This is all so distracting! Great they paid it back (over simplified, but thats not the point). They still hold more influence over our elected officials than the people do.
I AGREE that "THEY" have more influence over our politicians than We the PEOPLE and propose we FIX this via my proposal at http://occupywallst.org/forum/we-the-people-in-order-to-a-proposal/. It is IMPORTANT, however, to make sure everyone knows who "THEY" are...
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: Per the list of the "Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012" at http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php the top 20 or so donors are comprised MOSTLY of UNIONS donating to Democrats.
Does anyone think that MAYBE, just MAYBE, large donations from National Assn of Realtors, Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Laborers Union, and Carpenters & Joiners Union might have a LITTLE to do with the UNPRECEDENTED rate at which Fannie/Freddie kept JACKING up the CONFORMING LOAN LIMITS during the bubble? This limit virtually DEFINES the maximum value of a home loan folks can get, and it should NEVER move faster than a LONG TERM moving AVERAGE. Moving it UPWARD as fast as they DID only FUELED the bubble.
While we're at it, why are folks SO FOCUSED on the PRIVATE banks when the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received the LARGEST BAIL-OUT of ALL ? Furthermore the CEO's of these GOVERNMENT sponsored operations were making $14 million a year, but NOBODY complains about THAT. As I understand things, We the PEOPLE now hold something like 5 TRILLION in loan guarantees, and that's ON TOP of the $200 BILLION we had to throw at them at the onset. These QUASI-PRIVATE institutions have ALWAYS been used a political TOOLS by WHOEVER oversees them in Congress, and THAT'S how all that SPECIAL INTEREST money finds it's way to their POLICIES. In THIS case, the key figures were Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, though I'm SURE enough money was spread around that EVERYONE even NEAR Fannie/Freddie was corrupted THROUGH AND THROUGH.
They wouldn't if more people would vote.
It has nothing to do with voting unless you vote with zeros. That's how you really vote for politicians now is with a $ and lots of 0's. The voting that takes place at popular election is pretty much all show. The real politics and policies take place with large checks when the person is already in power.
That is very admirable. So now they're flush, can they can pay back the world the trillions lost when their house of cards collapsed? How about they just cover Fannie and Freddy for those home loans that went through without income checks and adequate down payments. Here is another...AIG. I just love how this absurdity is classified in the insurance category so you bank lovers just eliminate this from your thoughts. Remember AIG was insuring the banks. There is still money pledged for distribution in that bail out plan so hold on tight, its probably not over.
The GAO audit of the Federal Reserve's emergency actions (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf) shows the AIG balance at $21 billion as of June 29, 2011. The balance is under the Maiden Lane LLCs. If you look at the rate of retirement in the Maiden Lane accounts (http://newyorkfed.org/markets/maidenlane.html), you'll get a sense for the rate at which these obligations are being retired. Barring anything unforeseen, the ML II/III accounts should be retired next year or so.
I have no comment on Maiden until they provide transparency. I believe we have to wait until 2018 as per the SEC. Those SPVs are very tricky and only the insiders really understand the deal.
Any form of transparency is going to come from documents, and I've noticed a LOT (not ALL) of the people in this movement just don't like to read anything longer than 140 characters long.
How many OWS'ers know, for example, that the 2010 census reports 85% of all Americans actually DO have health insurance, that 67% of them live in own-occupied houses, and that those houses have lost only about 10% of their value?
I can say from experience in this forum that few OWS'ers understand the Federal Reserve is a Federal Agency, not a private bank. Go check Title 12, Chapter 3 of the Federal code. Neither have i found ANYONE who understands the ramifications of the Bretton Woods agreement or the Triffin Dilemma we CHOSE to enter AGAINST the recommendations of leading economists. Folks are working to define a NEW reserve currency, and we will be better able to serve our LOCAL needs rather than those of the GLOBAL ECONOMY once that happens. It will take a while, but we WILL get there.
Nearly ALL the people I have spoken with here have even LOOKED at any corporate earnings reports. If they HAD, they'd know that those "record profits" are derived almost EXCLUSIVELY from INTERNATIONAL operations, and comparing those INTERNATIONAL profits against DOMESTIC wages is ABSURD. NOBODY I've spoken with here understand that our TAX CODE forces overseas profits to STAY overseas, and I doubt ANY of the OWS'ers will we supporting tax reforms that encourage our corporations to REPATRIATE them.
Few even ACKNOWLEDGE that the LARGEST bail-out went to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Government Sponsored Entities. We pumped $200 billion into them AND absorbed liability for $5 TRILLION in loan guarantees. These agencies FUELED the bubble by constantly ratcheting up the CONFORMING LOAN limit every year, and they did so UNDER PRESSURE from Congress.
Few seem to know that the LARGEST donors to members of Congress were UNIONS giving to DEMOCRATS rather than CORPORATIONS giving to REPUBLICANS (see http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php). The contributions by the Realtors, the laborers, electricians, carpenters, etc. had a LOT to do with Congress pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to FUEL the bubble.
It goes on and on.
I think we DO have some problems that need to be fixed, but until OWS'ers are ready to do the HARD WORK it takes to UNDERSTAND the FACTS, they are nothing but a frustrated and emotional MOB.
I agree with you that many participants in the movement will greatly benefit from developing greater insights. I am happy to know that they are and that will be the beginning or our people superintending their own system. Some of these threads just seem absurd but don't assume that everyone in this movement doesn't understand some of the complex inner workings. I think your statistics regarding health insurance do not reflect the underinsured and the high cost of health care that is plaguing our nation's competiveness. I also know your number on real loss of home value is off a bit but I do agree that our government and Fannie and Freddy helped blow up those housing bubbles. Regulation is much too relaxed. I also feel that Americans need to get a grip and learn how to manage their finances- take responsibility. Your donor numbers are just not correct. Are you including SuperPac funds? I guess not because much of these contributions are disguised under non-profits. I am more concerned with balance of payments then repatriation and there is talk of legislation to get the money home again. The real problem is that these multinationals are doing this much business abroad because they are encouraged by our empirical system to use resources, particularly human in nature, and continue to export our jobs. We import more than export. We mostly export our jobs. My main concern, which is felt by many, is the corruption in government and its unanimity with large business interests. Any political contribution to ANY party is wrong and is not in the interest for the people or our long term survival as nation. You see this kind of capitalism will eat itself. If you keep outsourcing eventually there will be very little work and the only ones working will work for less due to the supply of labor. Eventually we will have less money to spend and buy less goods and services. The third world remains a third world or just keeps working for third world wages because they too are exploited. They won't buy too many things either. OK now where are we long term? It is not fair to Americans, or any other person who lives in this world. I guess there are many that know we can do better. We should do better. Stop the wars, no one wants to pay for and stop the corruption so that our elected officials have the power to superintend the details as many everyday people don't have the time understand the complexities. I am hopeful as people around the world are standing up together because it is the only way there will be a positive change. I am tired of imperialism and do not feel threatened to establish social justice. The 1% does because they never relinquish power easily, that has always been the way.
My post at http://occupywallst.org/forum/inconvenient-truths-america/ has the links to the census data I reference. The link to the all time heavy donors is from "opensecrets.org" a web site that specializing in tracking the influence of money in politics. I didn't attempt to color any figures, I just took them straight from the referenced sources.
I didn't think you were coloring the numbers, I really wanted to focus on how wrong it was for any party to raise funds. Obama's recent report does indicate he is way in the lead on donations and that is to be predicted with the concentration under one democratic candidate while there are a handful of republican candidates (characters) who have to share the conservative funding. Also interesting to note, that conservative funding is down 50% from the last presidential election. It just makes me sick to think of how much money is wasted on smear campaigns and soundbites that the Americans just eat up. It makes voting so easy and it really shouldn't be. We should vote on issues not ideals or misinformation. I wish there were no political parties or at least ones that were not influenced by the money that is required to run for any office. I think Carter was the last president that didn't focus on campaign contributions. I really didn't like him at the time and didn't vote for him but he was a good man who really understood some of our current issues.
Oh, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE !
See my proposal at http://occupywallst.org/forum/we-the-people-in-order-to-a-proposal/
I do not think this is completely true. Google the following General Accounting Office (GAO) report 11-696 dated just a few months ago. It was the one time audit of the federal reserve allowed by congress. Look at page 131. It indicates that 16 TRILLION was loaned to the banks during the crisis through the discount window and a dozen or so other emergency progams. The report details what portions of the loans have been repaid. Chase borrowed $391 Billion. Interestingly Citibank borrowed 2.51 Trillion all by itself. These were all short term loans repaid quickly to increase liquidity but the amounts are staggering.
A lot of the bailout money still stands unpaid. See page 4 of the report which shows what still is inpaid. The biggest amount unpaid is what is $909 Billion (nearly a trillion) for what is called agency mortgage backed security purchases. I believe these were the toxic loans taken off the bank's books. I doubt this trillion will ever get "repaid" to the taxpayers. Don't be fooled by repaid issue. Read the report by the government itself rather than listening to that Fox News report's simplistic interview on television.
Thanks Andrew! Just reviewed the GAO info. Those $ figures (both the initial $16 trillion, as well as the $909 billion outstanding) are truly astounding.
Legislation needs to be passed/implemented to break up these "Too Big to Fail" financial corporations (a Sherman Act part 2), because they are a financial threat to the security of the United States!
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np and it looks like it is going up 100 Billion a month.
http://www.just-gov.com/national-debt/
You are absolutely correct. These banks need to be broken up before they are not only too big to fail but too big to save.
Wow, like, that solves the whole issue, we'll just forget about Enron, and Halliburton, and BP and on and on and on! Now I see the light! We can all just pack up and go home because one corporation deigned to repay a taxpayer bailout loan by further defrauding the taxpayers! Hey, all you who owe on home mortgages, you made one payment now you can just tell the lender to F--K Off!
The government loans them at 0% (tax payers' money). They loan it to us at 4% or whatever. They make profit out of it and repay the bank. They also get almost unlimited access to short term capital for trading. More profits. It was a government sponsored recovery. Now nothing wrong with that. Except they gave themselves huge bonuses for that.
Exactly!!!
Of course they can pay it back. JP Morgan Chase holds $78 trillion in derivatives (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/banks-increase-holdings-in-derivatives/). What does $78 trillion dollars tell you about money in this country? It's all bullshit. They have $78 trillion dollars worth of bets on bets. It's just a number and it does not translate into things of value. One of my complaints as a OWS supporter is to protest against them screwing around with the monetary system.
Do you realize that we ran up our national debt saving these banks ? Paying it back is great but look at the mess we got our self into lending them that money. Maybe if they tried to help our country and American Citizens after we put our neck on the line to save them... Maybe then i would be against protesting Chase.
TheSenior -- Of course they would. Do you know how they did it?
Just like every banking institution, they have borrowed from the Fed at near 0% interest. Turned around and lent the money back to the Federal government for interest.
Further, they foreclosed on taxpayer properties. The same properties they set up as piss-poor loans and screwed the people that bailed them out.
Additionally, they continued their fraudulent investment strategies. Which is why we are again on the cusp of another banking failure.
Chase paid back the loan plus $800MM.
Piss poor loans that they decided to enter into.
Not on the cusp of a bank failure. Most banks are better capitalized than ever.
There isn't? Go tell that to the Europeans.
As long as there isn't a separation and segregation in duties between investment houses and commercial banks - we will see nonsensical, high risk assets that will continue to belly up the financial industry.
Anyhow, yes, the home owners entered into the loan knowingly. But these toxic assets were done with malice and forethought from the banks. They intentionally sold subprime mortgages which they turned around and split up into financial instruments -- then turned around and bet against them ... it's racketeering and conspiratorial.
Oh did they?
Everything must be fine then.
Keep shopping everyone!
You mean that Chase paid back the ransom they were holding over the government? So you are in favor of bailouts then? You like when the government picks winners? You obviously don't care about free market ideals...so what kind of 'con' are you? Certainly not a capitalist... nor a libertarian....
My guess would be confused.
The issue is, the 2008 financial crisis has steeped our economy in a downturn that we won't recover from for years (and unless we make serious changes, we may follow Japan, and this could be our lost decade). The case linking the crash with deregulation is very compelling (in my view decisive), thus, the bailout itself isn't really the issue (except for the obvious feelings of unfairness when banks, rather than people, are bailed out).
what about the 7.7 trillion layed out by the federal reserve undercover of darkness ?
do they charge the same interest they were charged?
Do you realize that's not the fucking point?
What about the trillions the federal reserve has created from nothing?
http://open.salon.com/blog/longcrisis/2012/03/16/ben_bernanke_and_his_77_trillion_dollar_secret
While the government is giving unlimited resources to the banks, many of the banks are committing fraud and accelerating foreclosure practices.
Do you, corpse-sucker, know the history of the monstrosity that is the acquisitor of JP Morgan-Chase?
A hundred years of financial history begins with the breakup of trusts like Standard Oil and the diversification of investment that followed the selling off of divisions. The Rockefeller dynasty ended up with Chase Bank and J. P. Morgan, the banker, bought Carnegie's steel mills and formed U. S. Steel. The Chemical Bank was founded as a chemical producer in 1823 It soon added banking to its charter. In 1844 the chemical business was abandoned. It has had a long history of mergers and acquisitions, before it acquired Chase Manhattan in 1996. It kept the Chase brand. In 2000 it absorbed J.P. Morgan and renamed itself J.P. Morgan-Chase. This sort of thing is not new.
Derived from: How Does That Work? https://www.createspace.com/3852916
and that affects my life how?
when you walk into a bank and apply for a loan, you ARE asking for money. They give you the numbers, you at that point need to THINK!!!!! do I and can I pay this!!!! You sign on the line agreeing, no one forces you! Just like when someone swipes that credit card for a pair of shoes or a boat....then defaults and files for BK. Who eats that money???? The bank and the rest of the American people! Look to you neighbor for failing to live responsibly. This is a land of opportunity! I will continue to teach my kids to succeed and work hard and not be intimidated out of being a top 5%.
Thats it a top 5%? Why not push them all the way? Let them be 1%'ers or less?
Funny how the banks, top companies, and government have no responsibilities for the bad decisions they made, but we at the bottom get nailed for it all. I see no one in jail from the leadership.
Lend me a few billion and I'll pay it back with interest as well.
What nonsense!
Lend me a few billion and I'll pay it back with interest as well.
What nonsense!
Yes, I realize it.
at the same time, how did they become profitable? Didn't the continued zero-interest window from the fed help things? Chase takes a zero% loan from the Fed and then buys a 1% treasury bond? Pretty easy 1% profit, isn't it?
951 cities joined the protest today. If OWS was not an authentic movement, this would not have happened. We have never seen anything like this in the entire history of the planet.
We understand why you are frighted. Change is unnerving. This must be very difficult for you. You and the others who are posting negative comments on this forum are feeling threatened and uncertain. We understand. These are anxious times.Try to consider this from the perspective of those on "the other side" and then remember, THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE. There is one country, under God.
This is a new leaderless movement, barely one month old. It is messy and confusing, as it should be.
Join us.
The banks gave the loans and pushed people into higher loans than they could afford. People trusted these banks to let them know what they could afford, and were often times talked into much higher amounts using accounting jargon that your average person doesn't understand. All in the name of getting more loans that could then be bundled and sold to AGI. So yes they got the bail out, and yes they paid it back great wonderful....moving forward what regulations are going to be put in place to keep them from doing this again, and further more who is going to spend the time in jail for pushing the bankers into talking people into taking loans they couldn't afford? Your argument goes both ways yes people took the loans, and 1000s have lost their homes as a result they have paid the price....the bankers have not paid the price for their part. So far they have received tons of money in the form of a bail out, even more money in the form of the property they foreclosed which more than makes up for the sweet interest rate they paid on that bailout they paid back. No arrests none of them are homeless, and ultimately nothing has changed. They should be held equally accountable if not more so for their actions. Your average person doesn't under stand the banking system like the bankers do and yet it is the average person who has paid far more of this price. On top of that millions more people around the world who have never taken out a loan with these banks for a car a house or any other large purchase item are suffering from the greed these banks showed in the form of a crappy economy that has sent the entire job market into a pit. So go preach your ideas some where else...try a wall street banker because at this point they are some of the few people who will agree with you.
If you dont understand what you are signing into for 30 years, dont sign it. We get bright eye to live a life we cant afford. Just like with student loans, college kids need to understand what they will be paying back before they take out the loan! Maybe schools should teach personal finance so next generations can get it!!!
Sorry haven't been able to respond to all the lunacy just got off the golf course and my Porsche blew out a front tire on the way down the driveway of my mansion. Took me about an hour to walk to my front door because this place is large.
Federal Reserve is born
In 1907 the greatest of the depressions occurred and hundreds of thousands of people were bankrupt and suffering. The bankers said, “We must do something in order to establish a system in this country that will enable us to survive and prosper.” So in November 1910, a group of the most powerful men in the world and the leaders of the financial system in the United States met at J. P. Morgan’s private hunting estate on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.
The two most important individuals who took part in this were Senator Nelson Aldrich, the grandfather of Nelson Rockefeller, and a man by the name of Paul Moritz Warburg. He had come from Germany in 1902 and with Rothschild money had purchased a partnership in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. He then received an indefinite leave of absence with a salary of $500,000 a year to go up and down the United States to organize opinion in favor of a banking system based upon that of Germany. (The German banking system was presided over by Paul Warburg’s twin brother, Max Warburg. —Ed.)
What these bankers wanted was a system that would appear to be established by the federal government and in which that government would take complete responsibility for all the obligations issued by the bank. But the notes issued by the bank would be private paper, controlled entirely by the banking system. The banks would then be able to control the money supply, determine what the interest rates would be, and what credit would be extended. It would be a system by which they would achieve total control of the country and the people therein.
Conspiracy germinates and grows in secrecy.
The conspirators spent about two weeks on Jekyll Island. It was probably the most secret conclave that has ever taken place in American history. They went to Georgia from New York in a sealed train. They used code names. They sent the regular estate servants ashore for vacations and hired a temporary group of servants who didn’t know any of them. They battled for about two weeks and gradually agreed upon certain principles that would be the basis for a new American banking system.
When they came back from Georgia, Aldrich, who was a stately old solon from Rhode Island, introduced what he called the Aldrich Banking Bill. Since it stank to high heaven of Wall Street it was rejected by the Senate Banking Committee out of hand and never got to the floor of Congress.
But the wily gentleman from Germany, Paul M.Warburg, knew exactly what they would have to do in order to put this over. “We must take away from this the stigma of private enterprise,” Warburg said. “We must convince the people that it is a government agency. We must call it the Federal Reserve System. Then everybody will think that it is a government organization and that it is constitutional. But we will so operate it that actually it will be under the control of the same bankers who want it for their own private benefits.” http://web.archive.org/web/20010225021123/http://www.go-oaktree.com/LarsonFed.htm
Federal Reserve is born
In 1907 the greatest of the depressions occurred and hundreds of thousands of people were bankrupt and suffering. The bankers said, “We must do something in order to establish a system in this country that will enable us to survive and prosper.” So in November 1910, a group of the most powerful men in the world and the leaders of the financial system in the United States met at J. P. Morgan’s private hunting estate on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.
The two most important individuals who took part in this were Senator Nelson Aldrich, the grandfather of Nelson Rockefeller, and a man by the name of Paul Moritz Warburg. He had come from Germany in 1902 and with Rothschild money had purchased a partnership in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. He then received an indefinite leave of absence with a salary of $500,000 a year to go up and down the United States to organize opinion in favor of a banking system based upon that of Germany. (The German banking system was presided over by Paul Warburg’s twin brother, Max Warburg. —Ed.)
What these bankers wanted was a system that would appear to be established by the federal government and in which that government would take complete responsibility for all the obligations issued by the bank. But the notes issued by the bank would be private paper, controlled entirely by the banking system. The banks would then be able to control the money supply, determine what the interest rates would be, and what credit would be extended. It would be a system by which they would achieve total control of the country and the people therein.
Conspiracy germinates and grows in secrecy.
The conspirators spent about two weeks on Jekyll Island. It was probably the most secret conclave that has ever taken place in American history. They went to Georgia from New York in a sealed train. They used code names. They sent the regular estate servants ashore for vacations and hired a temporary group of servants who didn’t know any of them. They battled for about two weeks and gradually agreed upon certain principles that would be the basis for a new American banking system.
When they came back from Georgia, Aldrich, who was a stately old solon from Rhode Island, introduced what he called the Aldrich Banking Bill. Since it stank to high heaven of Wall Street it was rejected by the Senate Banking Committee out of hand and never got to the floor of Congress.
But the wily gentleman from Germany, Paul M.Warburg, knew exactly what they would have to do in order to put this over. “We must take away from this the stigma of private enterprise,” Warburg said. “We must convince the people that it is a government agency. We must call it the Federal Reserve System. Then everybody will think that it is a government organization and that it is constitutional. But we will so operate it that actually it will be under the control of the same bankers who want it for their own private benefits.” http://web.archive.org/web/20010225021123/http://www.go-oaktree.com/LarsonFed.htm
Federal Reserve is born
In 1907 the greatest of the depressions occurred and hundreds of thousands of people were bankrupt and suffering. The bankers said, “We must do something in order to establish a system in this country that will enable us to survive and prosper.” So in November 1910, a group of the most powerful men in the world and the leaders of the financial system in the United States met at J. P. Morgan’s private hunting estate on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.
The two most important individuals who took part in this were Senator Nelson Aldrich, the grandfather of Nelson Rockefeller, and a man by the name of Paul Moritz Warburg. He had come from Germany in 1902 and with Rothschild money had purchased a partnership in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. He then received an indefinite leave of absence with a salary of $500,000 a year to go up and down the United States to organize opinion in favor of a banking system based upon that of Germany. (The German banking system was presided over by Paul Warburg’s twin brother, Max Warburg. —Ed.)
What these bankers wanted was a system that would appear to be established by the federal government and in which that government would take complete responsibility for all the obligations issued by the bank. But the notes issued by the bank would be private paper, controlled entirely by the banking system. The banks would then be able to control the money supply, determine what the interest rates would be, and what credit would be extended. It would be a system by which they would achieve total control of the country and the people therein.
Conspiracy germinates and grows in secrecy.
The conspirators spent about two weeks on Jekyll Island. It was probably the most secret conclave that has ever taken place in American history. They went to Georgia from New York in a sealed train. They used code names. They sent the regular estate servants ashore for vacations and hired a temporary group of servants who didn’t know any of them. They battled for about two weeks and gradually agreed upon certain principles that would be the basis for a new American banking system.
When they came back from Georgia, Aldrich, who was a stately old solon from Rhode Island, introduced what he called the Aldrich Banking Bill. Since it stank to high heaven of Wall Street it was rejected by the Senate Banking Committee out of hand and never got to the floor of Congress.
But the wily gentleman from Germany, Paul M.Warburg, knew exactly what they would have to do in order to put this over. “We must take away from this the stigma of private enterprise,” Warburg said. “We must convince the people that it is a government agency. We must call it the Federal Reserve System. Then everybody will think that it is a government organization and that it is constitutional. But we will so operate it that actually it will be under the control of the same bankers who want it for their own private benefits.” http://web.archive.org/web/20010225021123/http://www.go-oaktree.com/LarsonFed.htm
The issue isn't that. The issue is that the economy is in shambles as a result of their greed and malcontent. The issue is that they got bailed out. But the effects of their greed are now affecting every American through dwindling house prices, horrible inflation, and high unemployment.
The real issue stemming from the above is that Congress was quick to bailout their bedfellow bankers but is paralyzed when it comes to raising revenues or getting a job bill through.
The issue is wall street is important to our government while the suffering on mainstreet is downplayed and ignored.
Does the idiot that made this post understand that the Fed accepted worthless mortgage-backed securities to collateralize the bailout money, that the Fed normalized the yield curve so that the big banks can borrow short-term money at the discount window at near-zero interest rates and then turn around and buy long-term treasury notes at much high yields guaranteeing a risk-free gift of a return, that the SEC allows the big investment banks to rip-off honest investors 24/7 through the use of manipulative high-frequency trading on our capital markets, that all of the big banks are advisers to the Federal Reserve and get whatever favors they ask for, that almost every politician in Washington sucks up to the big banks for campaign funds which makes sure that the banks influence every piece of legislation that affects them, and that those same politicians made sure Glass-Steagall was repealed in the 90s so the investment and commercial operations of the banks were twisted together like a pretzel thus allowing the banks to rape and pillage anyone with a pulse, and that bank executives are immune from prosecution because they effectively own the SEC and U.S. Justice Department. Paying back the bailout money is tantamount to paying back a pittance on the money these banks were allowed to rip-off. It was a trivial cost of doing business to them. Does it please anyone to see the arrogant bank executives stroll into and out of the White House like they own the joint. The playing field is tilted one way in the direction of the Wall Street banks. Face it, pay-to-play is the name of the game in Washington and no one plays that game better than Wall Street bankers. Wise the fuck up.
Tell us what you did with the bailout. I will tell what you did with it. You went out and got more stocks with our money. You did not loan it out or make new new jobs with it. You made more money not jobs. The days of you Bankers sitting your fat ass all day is coming to an end. You just sit on your ass all day to come up with new ways to ship our jobs away to you can make even more money. That's going to stop.
Tell us what you did with the bailout. I will tell what you did with it. You went out and got more stocks with our money. You did not loan it out or make new new jobs with it. You made more money not jobs. The days of you Bankers sitting your fat ass all day is coming to an end. You just sit on your ass all day to come up with new ways to ship our jobs away to you can make even more money. That's going to stop.
Tell us what you did with the bailout. I will tell you you went out and got more stocks with our money. You did not loan it out or make new new jobs with it. The days of you Bankers sitting your fat ass all day is coming to an end.
yes we are mad at Chase because they were able to pay back the bail out money. yes we are mad at the riches because they did their taxes on time.
All major financial institutions were involved in the housing bubble. Creating mortgages for those who couldnt afford it.(predatory loans) This inflated the stability of the market and end up bringing down the global economy at once. Those same financial institutions are still in business, the same people who brought us the financial crisis are still in business.
They received nearly no punishment, but they got a big fat check they can pay back with low interest.
thats why these idiots are angry at Chase.
Gee....lets all give praise to these great bankers for paying back a loan. What a novel concept.
16th october 2011 Bank Bosses Day Surprize! We are here to declare the 16th of october as a starting day of " FILL THE SOCKS" - coordinate action taken by a people in order to give the lesson to the banking sector. we shall never be used by the ruling system as a shield to protect their wealth again! therefore since the october 16th 2011 people who are fighting for our freedom begin to withdraw the money from theirs banking deposits and convert them from virtual to the fresh printed dollar bills. the action starts immediately and last until the simple people will gain back their rights. all people who are unhappy with the status quo of corporatocracy are well welcome! this is the first announcement . help us spread the news - media somehow try not to see the occupy wall street properly - this action will open their eyes - just the risk of banking runs creates attention, and the need to coordinate policy with us - working class - 99% of the society. soon you will hear about the project everywhere. and you can create and add to it by yourself feel free to share this post with your friends, feel free to modify it and post it everywhere. this is people for people project.
See the award winning film INSIDE JOB if you want to see what really brought on the global financial crisis.. It's just incredible. Goldman is definitely the worst of the group and has absolutely corrupted our system. We need serious well planned non-violent direct action at their building. Massive crowds.
16th october 2011 Bank Bosses Day Surprize! We are here to declare the 16th of october as a starting day of " FILL THE SOCKS" - coordinate action taken by a people in order to give the lesson to the banking sector. we shall never be used by the ruling system as a shield to protect their wealth again! therefore since the october 16th 2011 people who are fighting for our freedom begin to withdraw the money from theirs banking deposits and convert them from virtual to the
fresh printed dollar bills. the action starts immediately and last until the simple people will gain back their rights. all people who are unhappy with the status quo of corporatocracy are well welcome! this is the first announcement . help us spread the news - media somehow try not to see the occupy wall street properly - this action will open their eyes -
just the risk of banking runs creates attention, and the need to coordinate policy with us -
working class - 99% of the society. soon you will hear about the project everywhere. and you can create and add to it by yourself feel free to share this post with your friends, feel free to modify it and post it everywhere. this is people for people project.
16th october 2011 Bank Bosses Day Surprize! We are here to declare the 16th of october as a starting day of " FILL THE SOCKS" - coordinate action taken by a people in order to give the lesson to the banking sector. we shall never be used by the ruling system as a shield to protect their wealth again! therefore since the october 16th 2011 people who are fighting for our freedom begin to withdraw the money from theirs banking deposits and convert them from virtual to the
fresh printed dollar bills. the action starts immediately and last until the simple people will gain back their rights. all people who are unhappy with the status quo of corporatocracy are well welcome! this is the first announcement . help us spread the news - media somehow try not to see the occupy wall street properly - this action will open their eyes -
just the risk of banking runs creates attention, and the need to coordinate policy with us -
working class - 99% of the society. soon you will hear about the project everywhere. and you can create and add to it by yourself feel free to share this post with your friends, feel free to modify it and post it everywhere. this is people for people project.
No need for name calling, someone has a different point of view then you, and they're idiots, huh? nTypical conservative attitude.
Paying back the money is not the point. It's the whole system itself. They'll lobby Washinton, throwing money at the politicians for their own gains. I don;t everything, and don't have all the answers, BUT, There needs to be a change in way things are done. Go to NewAmerica7.com, watch the video, these are the same people who predicted what would happen in 2009, in 2007. The media, and politicians blew them off as if they were nuts. Now he has a new prediction, and its not good! IT NEEDS TO WATCHED!!
Paying back the money is not the point. It's the whole system itself. They'll lobby Washinton, throwing money at the politicians for their own gains. I don;t everything, and don't have all the answers, BUT, There needs to be a change in way things are done. Go to NewAmerica7.com, watch the video, these are the same people who predicted what would happen in 2009, in 2007. The media, and politicians blew them off as if they were nuts. Now he has a new prediction, and its not good! IT NEEDS TO WATCHED!!
see but, they doesn't mean it won't ahpeen again,. here's what to do:
How we can easily Reform Wall Street: Take away their powers once again.
"We are here Congress because we want to bring BACK the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/071603.asp#axzz1aPEc3wX which saved our country from the Great Depression by preventing banks and insurance companies from merging and becoming large brokerage firms; instead of Banks and Insurance companies--can't we learn a history lesson here Congress? Btw, why did most of you vote for its repeal in 1999? http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/19/shattering-the-glass-steagall-act
Think about where we are now, it all started in 1999 with the subprime loans Senator Phil Gramm was peaching on Senate floor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKQOxr2wBZQ&feature=related
Furthermore, we also want you to CHANGE the Commodities Future Modernization Act of 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000 BACK to where it was before 2000, which since has deregulated energy markets and has allowed for such scams as The Enron Loophole; whereas in the early 2000's Enron Corp. was charging 400 bucks plus for a kilowatt hour...They all when to jail for this. But, the Enron loophole is still not closed, for example, allowing speculators to resell barrels of oil over and over again before it reaches the gas station owner. It's basically, legal gambling at our expense. What were those lawmakers thinking then? What are you thinking now? Either do the right think, or you're part of the 1%."
Why are oil prices high? The Enron Loophole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbdtTGYQBMU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNp0y0SjOkY&feature=related
Rolling Stones Reporter: Truth about Goldman Sachs--how they have cornered the markets--basically, The Enron Loophole and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waL5UxScgUw
Goodbye, troll
And every corporate drone got a bonus.... When you go broke I wonder who is going to bail you out, and give you a bonus?
Why be insulting is someone stepping on your toes?
Adding Up the Government’s Total Bailout Tab
Beyond the $700 billion bailout known as TARP, which has been used to prop up banks and car companies, the government has created an array of other programs to provide support to the struggling financial system. Through April 30, the government has made commitments of about $12.2 trillion and spent $2.5 trillion — but also has collected more than $10 billion in dividends and fees. Here is an overview, organized by the role the government has assumed in each case.
[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html]
Yay for Chase, they paid back the bailout money that they never wanted in the first place.
They are still "too big to fail" and they need to be broken up.
July 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. [full article athttp://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM ]
Please read "Thinking about Revolution" at www.NewDemocracyWorld.org .
chase should have went t bankrupt and everyone who owed them money should have been let off the hook.
I am an idiot who wants the same deal that the banks got. OK, here's my deal. Because of being unemployed I'm in the hole for about $10,000. I am now working. If you can bail me out and lend me $10,000 then I will pay you back with interest. Why do the banks get that deal and I don't.
Bail me out and I will pay you back with interest.
For your sake, I hope Chase doesn't hold YOUR mortgage.
You calling us "Idiots" ?? I suggest you do research instead of watching Faux News for your information.
Okay listen up this is how it works. A person goes to the bank and cashes his paycheck. The teller hands him a dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax ,
At the end of the day the drugstore deposits the dollar back into the bank and the dollar sits there over night.
The next day another person goes to the bank and cashes his check. The teller gives him a dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax,
At the end of the second day the drugstore deposits the dollar back into the bank and the dollar sits there over night.
The next day another person goes to the bank and cashes his check. The teller gives him the dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax,
At the end of the year after 365 days the govenment made 2555 % on that dollar
Hate to be the bearer of bad news however if every person in the United Stares spent just one dollar a day for one year that would be approximately 300 million multiplied by 365 but lets just round it off to 300. and multiply 300 million by 300 which equals $900,000,000,000.00 nine hundred billion. Please keep in mind that these calculations are base on everyone spending only 1 dollar a day for a year which we rounded off the calendar to only 300 days. So who are they kiddin? There fighting over nothing because there isn't that much money in the US
Okay listen up this is how it works. A person goes to the bank and cashes his paycheck. The teller hands him a dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax ,
At the end of the day the drugstore deposits the dollar back into the bank and the dollar sits there over night.
The next day another person goes to the bank and cashes his check. The teller gives him a dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax,
At the end of the second day the drugstore deposits the dollar back into the bank and the dollar sits there over night.
The next day another person goes to the bank and cashes his check. The teller gives him the dollar. He goes to the drugstore and spends the dollar and pays 7% (percent) tax,
At the end of the year after 365 days the govenment made 2555 % on that dollar
Hate to be the bearer of bad news however if every person in the United Stares spent just one dollar a day for one year that would be approximately 300 million multiplied by 365 but lets just round it off to 300. and multiply 300 million by 300 which equals $900,000,000,000.00 nine hundred and ninety nine billion. Please keep in mind that these calculations are base on everyone spending only 1 dollar a day for a year which we rounded off the calendar to only 300 days. So who are they kiddin? There fighting over nothing because there isn't that much money in the US
Uh Huh after the Federal Reserve printed the money for them 2007-2010. I am calling them out I think that they have substantial loses on their balance sheet they are hiding. Rob Peter to pay Paul got it.
Google the following General Accounting Office (GAO) report 11-696 dated just a few months ago. It was the one time audit of the federal reserve allowed by congress. Look at page 131. It indicates that 16 TRILLION was loaned to the banks during the crisis through the discount window and a dozen or so other emergency progams. The report details what portions of the loans have been repaid. Chase borrowed $391 Billion. Interestingly Citibank borrowed 2.51 Trillion all by itself. These were all short term loans repaid quickly to increase liquidity but the amounts are staggering. A lot of the bailout money still stands unpaid. See page 4 of the report which shows what still is inpaid. The biggest amount unpaid is what is $909 Billion (nearly a trillion) for what is called agency mortgage backed security purchases. I believe these were the toxic loans taken off the bank's books. I doubt this trillion will ever get "repaid" to the taxpayers. Don't be fooled by repaid issue. Read the report by the government itself it is informative.
Thank you so I was right with my observation.
Once Upon A Time...In a Land Far Away...There was a beautiful land called America.
It had not yet been plundered and raped and robbed by the likes of you traitors.
What the Republican Leadership in the US Congress is doing is committing SEDITION!
Need a definition? Here ya go Traitor: Sedition From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.
Typically, sedition is considered a subversive act, and the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is also a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution.
The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government by democratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).
Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state, giving aid to enemies, or levying war against one's state. Sedition is encouraging one's fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one's country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws. Contents [hide]
"Sedition complements treason and martial law: while treason controls primarily the privileged, ecclesiastical opponents, priests, and Jesuits, as well as certain commoners; and martial law frightens commoners, sedition frightens intellectuals."[citation needed] [edit] United Kingdom
Sedition was a common law offence in the UK. James Fitzjames Stephen's "Digest of the Criminal Law" stated that "a seditious intention is an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to exite disaffection against the person of His Majesty, his heirs or successors, or the government and constitution of the United Kingdom, as by law established, or either House of Parliament, or the administration of justice, or to excite His Majesty's subjects to attempt otherwise than by lawful means, the alteration of any matter in Church or State by law established, or to incite any person to commit any crime in disturbance of the peace, or to raise discontent or disaffection amongst His Majesty's subjects, or to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of such subjects.
An intention to show that His Majesty has been misled or mistaken in his measures, or to point out errors or defects in the government or constitution as by law established , with a view to their reformation, or to excite His Majesty's subjects to attempt by lawful means the alteration of any matter in Church or State by law established , or to point out, in order to secure their removal, matters which are producing, or have a tendency to produce, feelings of hatred and ill-will between classes of His Majesty's subjects, is not a seditious intention."
The last prosecution for sedition in the United Kingdom was in 1972, when three people were charged with seditious conspiracy and uttering seditious words for attempting to recruit people to travel to Northern Ireland to fight in support of Republicans. The seditious conspiracy charge was dropped, but the men received suspended sentences for uttering seditious words and for offences against the Public Order Act.[1]
In 1977, a Law Commission working paper recommended that the common law offence of sedition in England and Wales be abolished. They said that they thought that this offence was redundant and that it was not necessary to have any offence of sedition.[1] However this proposal was not implemented until 2009, when sedition and seditious libel (as common law offences) were abolished by section 73 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (with effect on 12 January 2010).[2] Sedition by an alien is still an offence under section 3 of the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919.[3]
In Scotland, section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 abolished the common law offences of sedition and leasing-making[4] with effect from 28 March 2011 [5]. [edit] India
Signed Alleric
The lords of Wall St, the central economic controllers who wield the invisible hand of mindless greed, the uber investors and banksters, are a greater threat to our survival than all of the tyrants and terrorists since the beginning of civilazation. They own or control what we must have to live. To hell with Ayn Rand and the cult of the 'best and brightest' individuals! http://www.agkaiser.org/endgame/HowDoesThatWork.pdf
I know about the repayment. But where is the 800MM? What did that get reinvested in? Seems like it just vanished.
This post is distracting. There are plenty of people who know money needs to be removed from our system of self rule. shit like this just distracts us as we want to teach but focus is what we need. focus on a solution demand. No time to teach or convince the ignorant. We have the numbers for this http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Yes Chase took the houses from the poor for half the marketvalue and sold it to its owners (The ultra rich families) Its quit easy to make money like that!
They took what was theirs ... Someone defaults ... The bank gets the house
Wall Street gets bailed out to the grand sum of $16 Trillion dollars (GAO figures), and the homeowners get the shaft? We should have let the financial corporations collapse and bought our OWN Mortgages from them---at auction--- (when the corporations were liquidated due to their risky, predatory-lending based, investing) for pennies on the dollar- That's REAL Capitalism.
The financial institutions very quickly Socialized their losses to save themselves, but if an individual needs help it's "Suck it up! Pick yourself up by your own boot straps."
Please provide support for that GAO figure
It's from the audit of the Federal Reserve
Google the following: General Accounting Office (GAO) report 11-696 dated just a few months ago. (From Andrew---Above---review Andrew's referenced pages---the info is right there.)
Thank you for asking. We're all in this together.
Yep, would make sence, but not if you do your job so badly that you need the bailout.
Well....as a taxpaying citizen, did i get a special dividend check from the treasury!? No....go and read some MMT and post here after.
Great they paid it back!
Did they pay back the 33% losses in property value for their crash to the millions of property owners?
Did they pay back all the money lost to the unemployed and failed businesses?.
Did they pay back all the investments that crashed on Wall st 401k's ,pensions and retirement investments?
Did they pay interest the same as they charge their customers for borrowed money?
etc.etc.etc.
Do you realize your the idiot jack ass?
Your ignorance scares me
on my blog
http://blog.richardkentgates.com/
or just the form
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dFlNNHJTRlZwMWs5ZjlhTWN0NlZReHc6MQ#gid=0
Read this article, from your beloved mainstream media CNN and a depiction of how Democracy REALLY works:
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
The hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes."
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-22/us/bailout.accountability_1_tarp-money-bailout-money-troubled-assets-relief-program?_s=PM:US
So what? Did that money go to the American people? No.
What about the $16 TRILLION (with a T) the Federal Reserve handed out to banks (some of them foreign banks)?
That means nothing when 15% of the American population, 46 million people, is in poverty - that's the equivalent of the entire population of 24 states combined.
Blame the fact that American's want to buy cheap goods from China thus moving the jobs those people would probably do overseas. It is our own fault.
Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT - and the corporations that benefit from them - are what's moved jobs overseas. Neither I nor anyone I know wants to buy cheap goods from China, but when wages are stagnant (as they've been for 30 years now), and big box stores drive local retailers out of business anyway, we don't have a choice.
Saying "it's our own fault" is ultimately blaming the victim.
Read this article from CNN describing how Democracy REALLY works:
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
The hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes."
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-22/us/bailout.accountability_1_tarp-money-bailout-money-troubled-assets-relief-program?_s=PM:US
Banks still owe us over a trillion. What about that, huh? Why are you defending the same people who crashed the economy?
Owe a trillion ??? Where des that number come from
Big words, big ideas. You are right they paid up. Did they pay back all the AIG money that they forced us to lend because of all their BS loans? You need to read (and think) a little more. Ever heard of the Shell Game?
I assume that you mean the BS loans that the American public decided to take? Nobody forced them. They chose to sign the paper.
Haha - Im a businessman - If I want to dump my debt because Im overextended I bail - no questions asked. If a person does it they are what - different from a businessman who takes a risk? No. Get real dude. Im with you - people should be responsible but should my 401K have to pay for a bunch of crap securities that were fraudulently sold to them? I personally know of companies overseas that did the SAME thing with investments and wrote off millions each - maybe billions over the course of the past few years. Wake up and smell the coffee - big business used us and will continue to use us if we dont take control of them.
Speaks volumes to your character as a businessman. I bail. Great.
PS How many millions did Trump (Republican/Tea Party Fave) dump on his creditors? How many bankruptcies? Think about all the businesses who do it - do you know how few people get into bankruptcy on solely a personal basis? The majority are due to major medical problems.
You need to read more and open your mind.
yes some are due to medical bills. Filing BK and stiffing the medical bills also drive up the cost of medical. We all pay for the people who dont, accross the board! From my experience, it has been people living beyond their means due to credit card debt.
I am still in biz - and my father had his own biz as well. He went thru bankruptcy and PAID EVERY DEBT to the penny.
Watch who you assume shit about - I am an incredibly good businessman with integrity. You shouldn't assume so much it makes you look stupid.
There are billions not paid back. Look at the insurance companies. The banks caused the collapse in the first place. Are you defending them?
Yep. What caused the collapse was a bunch of piggish American's buying more house then the could ever afford. Yeah I know the argument....the banks made us do it. Nobody made anyone do it. It is just that people had blinders on and wanted that big house to impress their friends.
When something appears to good to be true it probably is.
People should have asked questions. What happens if rates go up? What happens if the price of the property falls? etc etc etc. They did because they didn't want the answer because then they potentially wouldn't be able to have that nice big house.
Nobody forced any buyer to do the deal. They chose to do it.
Look it is science at this point. The banks knew exactly what they were doning. It is an old play in their books and works. That is why they were regulated in the first place. Because they are predatory and parasitic in nature and have no other aim but profit. Remove the risks for them and they will loan a million to a cat. Watch the cycle inflate bubble -loans default -get bailed out -economy collapses -buyers market!
Many more people will come to your side when you are proactive (for “new” Business & Government solutions), instead of reactive (against “old” Business & Government solutions), which is why what we most immediately need is a comprehensive “new” strategy that implements all our various socioeconomic demands at the same time, regardless of party, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves; that is, using a Focused Direct Democracy organized according to our current Occupations & Generations. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategically Weighted Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
because we need 100,000 “support clicks” at AmericansElect.org to support a Presidential Candidate -- such as any given political opportunist you'd like to draft -- in support of the above bank-focused platform.
Most importantly, remember, as cited in the first link above, that as Bank Owner-Voters in your 1 of 48 "new" Business Investment Groups (or "new" Congressional Committees) you become the "new" Congress replacing the "old" Congress according to your current Occupation & Generation, called a Focused Direct Democracy.
Therefore, any Candidate (or Leader) therein, regardless of party, is a straw man, a puppet; it's the STRATEGY – the sequence of steps – that the people organize themselves under, in Military Internet Formation of their Individual Purchasing & Group Investment Power, that's important. Sequence is key.
Why? Because there are Natural Social Laws – in mathematical sequence – that are just like Natural Physical Laws, such as the Law of Gravity. You must follow those Natural Social Laws or the result will be Injustice, War, etc.
The FIRST step in Natural Social Law is to CONTROL the Banks as Bank Owner-Voters. If you do not, you will inevitably be UNJUSTLY EXPLOITED by the Top 10% Management Group of Business & Government who have a Legitimate Profit Motive, just like you, to do so.
Consequently, you have no choice but to become Candidates (or Leaders) yourselves as Bank Owner-Voters according to your current Occupation & Generation.
So please JOIN the 2nd link, so we can make our support clicks at AmericansElect.org when called for by e-mail from the group in the 2nd link, and then you will see and feel how your goals can be accomplished within the strategy of the 1st link as a “new” Candidate (or Leader) of your Occupation & Generation.
Whoever posted this needs to go get an education.
Gosh it sure seems like there are about 40 people in here that do realize that Chase paid back their bailout. They even know how it happened, and why they should be pissed about it! Thanks for pointing that out, OP! Great work!
What did they pay it back with? Gold? Or monopoly money
We enabled Chase to stay afloat by giving them tax-payer funded, low-interest loans, and without solid paperwork or contracts with conditions, (the applications were 2 pages long). In turn, they were supposed to be in a position to begin loaning to small businesses again. Never happened. And since Bush's guy, Henry Paulson handed out money like the banks hand out suckers, without regard to how they would spend the money, Wall Street traders made off with a huge chunk of it in the form of bonuses.
We own a family business and it hasn't been this hard to get a loan since since 1985. Mortgage interest rates are at the lowest in my lifetime but it does us no good because we can't get a bank to re-finance our loan. Why would they? They are getting 6.75% from us now why would they want to take 3.5% and loose money? Chase is getting 9% on mortgages in Europe so why would they loan here?
It is the rich Jews that are destroying the USA. Take a look. Don't believe me. Bloomberg, Schwartz, Lehman, Goldman Sachs, etc. Get it? Jews don't care about the non-chosen people, which we are. We are 99% they are the 1%, but own most of the world now. Look at the U symbol or KSA or K symbols on food. It means it is Kosher. YOU the 99% are paying for their kosher food and they make billions for it because the symbols are patented. They use religion to highjack the food system and we think kosher is better, it is not. They steal our money and do not support anyone but themselves. Again, Wake up America, your freedom is being abused by wealthy Zionist Jews. International Jewry is destroying the world again.
Do you realize that the Investment Banks during the housing Bubble Naked Shorted stocks to the Tune of 1.6 trillion Dollars, and FAIL to Deliver them?..... That GS and the 'Big Ten' have that money in off shore Accounts NOT being Audited?
Did you realize those FTDs.. have not been Taxed, and the Crooks who Stole that money are the ones that RUN the SEC, and The Fed. Reserve... ?
Did you know you can Stop that? Your first step would be to grow up and Stop calling people Idiots that are fighting for YOUR Future!
They paid us back with our own money, you clown; they became a bank holding company which allowed them to borrow from the fed without interest and then loan money (even to the government itself) at interest! Think about it; they were loaning us our own money! I mean, how about you give me 100 dollars which I sell back to you at 110 dollars - it's a bloody LICENSE to print money. Even loan sharks don't get away with this shit.
Do some research before you start calling people idiots. Start here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
After they took my home of 15 yrs? have some compassion if you call yourself an American
I think I speak for everyone in the financial services sector in saying thank good you numbnuts don't work in it.
I agree a lot of these people have zero understanding .... Maybe if we were talking about art history they would
Says the man who doesn't know the crash was all part of a big scam, and thus proves himself to be one of the sheared sheep, not the shearer.
The corporate media and politicians are still claiming that "we made a profit from TARP" and that "everything was repaid."
This is a bald lie. AIG didn't repay their money. Neither did GM. Money was shuffled around in a complex shell game to appear that all was repaid but in fact what happened was that you, the taxpayer, were looted.
You were looted through higher prices at the gas pump, higher prices at the grocery store, lower wages and at the same time zero interest rates so those of you who were prudent got fucked THREE TIMES instead of twice! . . . First they fucked you, then the government paid them to fuck you again. . . . http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195841
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/no-big-banks-have-not-paid-back-government-bailouts-and-subsidies
Does the Tea Party, any of the reporters on Fox News, or any of the GOP presidential candidates?
Because they talk about how the bailouts contributed to our debt, when in fact every single dime lent out has been repaid plus interest.
Maybe they're smarter than we thought! The money was NOT fucking repaid; basically the banks borrowed 1 dollar, borrowed 10 more, and then gave back the 1 dollar, saying, "hey, we paid you back." All the opaque subsidies they received from the government and the fed were never repaid.
okay so they borrowed 1 dollar from us. but who in the hell did they borrow the 10 from?
For every one dollar they receive they are allowed to end out nine more and collect interest on allf it. This s how they 'create money.' what it really does is devalue the dollar by ten by putting more dollars into the economy. Ths creates inflation, which s really a tax on borrowing.
TO Who???
Where is the check indicating that your taxed dollars got interest and a return?
In addition, 9 banks were forced to take the money by the Treasury Department to instill confidence back in the banking system.
Here is a link: http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news8920.html
They don't even realize that the bailout money was given to the banks BY the US Government. Many of the politicians that voted to DO IT, are still in office. The government APPROVED the methods of the loans, the interest rates on them, and amounts, terms etc and wrote the checks.
That is the opposite of STEALING.
Do we really care that they paid back the bailout money when they ruined the country without consequence? For crying out loud stay on the damn point of OWS... Who's really the idiot?
If you go to the Facebook link smuck you will see that you are marching on Chase tomorrow morning because Chase took bailout money. What it fails to denote is that it has all been paid back plus interest. Douche.
And what you continue to fail to grasp my dim witted friend, is the fact that just because Chase paid back their bailout money, it didn't fix the fallout they caused in the economy - did it? Because if it did, you can call me a douche all you want. Until then, you should shut your fucking mouth.
Should have never been in the position to need it, and should never have been bailed out to begin with.
And their interest didn't cover the US's interest on the loan, meaning it was a net loss
Yay! One bank paid it back I guess that good enough. And please stop with the idiots, and lazy bullshit with people who haven't said anything mean about you. That just shows you're not capable of argument just middle-school name calling.
Until you show me the actual ACCOUNTING for all the bailout transactions.. and the terms of payment... and the category to which those payments were APPLIED on both sides... then your statement here is as "blind" as the protesters you are mocking. It has been stated, "The Congress was not even informed of WHO the bailout money was going to... and WHAT the bailout money was supposed to be used for." And the MOST important point to make here... it that the American People were NOT allowed to VOTE on who would receive bailout money... or how much $$$ would be allocated. And that, my friend, is NOT Democracy.
Yeah I get a copied of the cancelled check for you. Every major news outlet both right and left leaning reported it. What a fucking dope.
And where did the news outlets (both right and left) get their information? From the same people who are pulling the wool over your eyes... and making YOU look like a fucking dope for defending them. Ha!
Really. Your now challenging the entire news industry. The Treasury Department released press reports that they paid it back. I guess you don't believe them either.
Read this article, dumb-ass, from YOUR beloved mainstream media:
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
The hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes."
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-22/us/bailout.accountability_1_tarp-money-bailout-money-troubled-assets-relief-program?_s=PM:US
I'm sorry. If your point about the news outlets being fed information by wool pullers is true-then I cannot trust your information from a news outlet. It also makes you....what was it?.....an (*&^% dope for defending this article as the truth.
Ha! Look at the little chicken run and hide now. You asked for proof. I gave you proof. Now, you realize what a dumb-ass you are. And the only thing you have to say is, "Well, if you don't trust the media... then I don't trust the media. So there!" Just admit it. You're wrong. And we have two Congressional Oversight Committees that have gone on PUBLIC RECORD to say that the Bail-Out was a secretive money laundering operation-- and Congress was not privy to the details. Admit it!
No, you said that the media could not be trusted to give me "the truth" and then used something printed by that untrustworthy media as "the truth". That makes you the dumb ass. Try not to undermine your own arguments-it helps your opponent.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying that it indicates hyprocrisy for a Senator like Barney Frank to be demanding accounting from the Treasury for something HE (Barney Frank) signed without doing his own due diligence. Those who caused the original problem NEED to be held accountable. BUT the people who DID NOT hold them accountable in the first place AND handed them blank checks on TOP of it ARE JUST AS BIG A PROBLEM FOR ME.
A congress who approves a bail out "WITHOUT ANY DETAILS" should be tried as co-criminals.
Co-criminals... and like I have said before... tried for TREASON-- which maintains a maximum penalty of DEATH. And by the way, I gave you 1 example from CNN... I could give you 100 examples from every living source on the planet. But, who has the time...
But aren't those 100 living sources polluted by the wool pullers?
Depends on who you think the wool pullers are? Can you please provide a list of wool pullers? Is that something you really want to waste your time talking about?
Exactly WHO made the statement that a democratic majority congress and a democrat majority senate VOTED on giving billions of dollars away WITHOUT knowing "who the bailout money was going to or what the bailout money was supposed to be used for"??????
Read this article, pickle-head, from YOUR beloved mainstream media:
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
The hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes."
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-22/us/bailout.accountability_1_tarp-money-bailout-money-troubled-assets-relief-program?_s=PM:US
That is a matter of public record, my friend. The Congress blindly said, "OK. A $Trillion here... A $Trillion there... and we'll let the Federal Reserve and Treasury Dept decide who gets what."
Did they pay at least the same interest they charge others? I didn't think so
They paid 9%
Not a bad return.
Thanks for the answer. That sounds reasonable
Right, but they used other treasury funds allocated to lending small businesses that never got them to pay it back. http://goo.gl/Vmpi3
Do you, the real idiot, realize that Chase, along with a few others, have printed trillions and trillions to lend to foreigners? Give away? Wipe their ass with?
In 2004, as a bank teller making 9.00 an hour I received a phone call from a teachers credit union offering me a home loan of 240,000. At 20 years of age and knowing nothing about the economy... I knew there was something wrong with this picture. Listen... people KNEW they couldn't afford homes, equity lines, etc. They signed their own names on those loan docs.. knowing they didn't have money to pay it back. After all those folks decided to sign away ... AFTER that is when banks began to package these risky loans. IT'S EVERYONE INVOLVED THAT IS RESPONSIBLE... EVERYONE. Down to the reg. joe who took money they couldn't afford to pay back. WAKE UP! SHUT UP!!! If I, in all my naivety did not take the offer...as much as I wanted that new car.. or house... then those "POOR" little people who lost all their homes KNEW exactly what they were doing. They were not mentally handicapped.. THEY KNEW.. so quit crying and stop pointing fingers. WE ARE ALL in this mess together.
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Let me give you a great big hand of applause!
You think that corporations would pump billions of dollars each year into Madison Ave for advertising if they believed it didn't work? You believe that public perception can't be manipulated by media? Lifestyles and expectations of what is normal can't be determined by media ads?
There are 100's of psych papers, marketing studies and billions of dollars put out by industry every year on the subject that indicates that you are wrong.
Another Chase paid idiot trying to desperately salvage back Chase's dirty reputation?
It's called irony.
They didn't want the money in the first place because they didn't make too many stupid loans.
Proof. Are you fucking kidding? You are now questioning the very strict( that you Obamination ) financial reporting in our country.
Strict financial reporting? You want proof of inflation? It's called the yellow metal.
Gold in 2003 - 400 per ounce
Gold in 2011 - 1600 per ounce
Silver in 2003 - 7 per ounce
Silver in 2011 - 30 per ounce.
400% and 435% appreciation per. What's that called? That's right, that's called INFLATION.
Obamanation? What are you, an Obama minion? You supported him to bail out the banks with OUR TAX PAYER MONEY?!
really, a highly speculated commodity represents inflation? Inflation adjusted price of gold in 1980 was above $1000 oz, inflation adjusted gold price today is $740 oz. What is that called?
Price of gold increase over 10 year period: http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html
CME now manipulating gold prices (pushing gold prices downward) by increasing margin requirements by 27%---so much for a "Free Market" : http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cme-increases-gold-margin-requirements-by-27-2011-08-24
While Fed Money Supply Increases (take a look at the St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base):
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&width=1000&height=600&preserve_ratio=true&s[1][id]=AMBNS
Obviously, there are other factors at work (because there is not a perfect correlation between inflating the money supply and an increase price of gold), but money supply/gold prices are going in the same direction---up---until the CME mandated 27% increased Margin Requirement.)
sigh, there's always conspiracy theories. CME is my exact point about gold speculation. If you're buying gold for hedging, you're not buying it on margin, you're buying gold coins/bars with cash. Do you think the central banks or people who buy physical gold care about a margin increase? The only people this margin increase hurts are the speculators, who's trying to buy $3 of gold for every $1 they have in their pocket and make a quick buck. Once you get this speculative fast money crowd out, then perhaps you can discover the true price of gold.
You mean CME changed policy to get the speculative fast money out of gold and move said speculative fast money elsewhere...now why would the CME want to do that...to drive down the price of gold for your above mentioned hedgers, perhaps?
Financial institutions have already demonstrated that they are untrustworthy, don't know who would be gullible enough to believe them now.
I’m sure you know the basic economics Supply, Demand, Price relationship: With a steady fixed supply, increasing price at Time 1 results in a decreased demand (e.g. with gold the CME margin increase fixed a speculative price increase on gold, decreasing demand by speculators, thus decreasing gold price at Time 2.)
The folks who are able to take advantage of the gold price decrease, within a certain price window, are non-speculators (due to the margin increase) ---precisely those Hedgers with large cash reserves.
Those CME folks are, by-and-large, brilliant---They do everything for a reason.
When we see who the winners are in this gold margin manipulation (increase), we will likely get an answer for why they did it.
you can believe what you want, but the basic reason for raising margin is the increase in price volatility. You used to be able to borrow $10 for every $1 you have because gold prices didn't move that much, so you couldn't lose much. But now you have gold moving $50 to $100 a day, which can easily wipe out a trader's margin and hurt the lender providing the margin, so that's why they raise the margin requirement.
You're a smart person. You provide insightful information. I understand your volatility argument, it makes sense.
In reference to you volatility Argument: What happened to the desire for a free market (keeping policy changes/manipulations out of the market)? Sounds like a CME pseudo-"bailout/social support" for lenders, to me. Thought the lenders were hard-core capitalists, allowing the market dust to settle where it needs to settle, not pseudo-socialists?
I DISAGREE that volatility was the only reason for the margin increase. I believe that the volatility argument is likely incomplete.
I guarantee that the CME margin increase went through a great deal of financial modeling (e.g. Monte Carlo simulations, etc.) prior to implementation. The CME knew all likely ramifications for the change.
I am certain that those folks who knew the change was coming, had the requisite capital, and knew the model predictions, stood to make a great deal of money (E.G. speculators stocking up on futures/options to sell gold (at pre-margin “increase announcement” prices.)) Non-Speculators (who didn’t have to be “in the know” on the CME gold margin policy change), who obviously like the decreased price of Gold after the announcement, were able to decrease the risk in their investment portfolio (if they were hedging) at a decreased cost per ounce of gold.
Inflation adjusted to WHICH era's dollar value? What you just posted is proof right there. In fact, do you EVEN HAVE a stable era dollar value? That's my point RIGHT THERE. Which era? And in fact, if the dollar served it's purpose to be a stable monetary unit and store of value, then we wouldn't HAVE to be picking which era's dollar value to choose from.
based on 1982-1984 dollar value, you can easily look this up. I've seen many of your posts here, and while you have some good points, most of your economic understandings are rudimentary at best.
Gold is not inflation, Gold is just something people speculate on. During uncertain times people hoard gold, during prosperous times, people sell gold..because really, what are you going to do with bars of gold.
Wow. I think you need to go review an economics text. Gold is a hedge against inflation. But now it's used as an alternative currency when the mainstream currency is debased. And that's what's happening now. Despite the deflation that's currently starting in the credit markets, it still hasn't gone below 1400. What does that mean? It means other nations are using it to trade/barter with. Speculate with? Please. It's already being used to as a form of currency. Otherwise Central Banks in India, China, and Mexico wouldn't be buying it up by the boatload, and China wouldn't have legalized the use of gold as currency.
Try again.
Economic texts will teach you economic theory, and theoretically, gold is a hedge against inflation. But in the real world it's not, it's just another speculative tool. Just look at the price of gold over the last 30 years or so, it shoots up very quickly when things are bad, then slowly falls when economy recovers. The unadjusted price of gold went from 300 in 1978 to 700 in 1980, then back to 300 for much of the 90s and early 2000s. So the monetary value of your gold in fiat dollar terms did not change for over 20 years if you just held it.
Gee, convenient you forget that's what happens with rampant inflation and deflation. Not to mention TODAY we are in a globalized world where practically NO ONE is communist, China and India are ACTIVELY promoting their populations to buy gold and silver. Your trend would remain correct as long as treasury yields changed their interest rates and we were pre berlin wall.
But guess what. It's post communism. And yet, even in YOUR inflation adjusted terms gold is at least 100% higher than your average. And yet we're in deflation. With 2 billion people actively seeking out other forms of currency because the world reserve, the dollar, is severely debased.
Speculation? Please. It's a defense against the inevitable.
people once bought all the tulips they can as well, just saying
Back then THAT was an investment
THIS is currency. Big difference between the two.
No genius Obamination as in abomination. Get it. Fuck you guys are dim.
And you have no clue as to how basic inflation and deflation works. Go read a book on economics.
Ha! Alan Greenspan went on record as saying, "Perhaps I didn't quite understand the comprehensive effects of an inflationary marketplace." And that was when he was Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So, don't pretend to any of us that you fully understand the complexities of the U.S. Economy. In 2011, I don't think ANYONE does. ha!
Well, it's Alan Greenspan I doubt he was qualified to even be the Fed chairman....maybe that's why he was picked...
No one, especially Ben Bernanke, is qualified to be the Fed chairman. That is why the Fed is such a destructive institution.
Ben Bernanke knows a hell lot more of market forces than Greenspan. He literally wrote the book on the fed's effects on the macroeconomy...I am happy with Bernanke as the chairman.
I think at this point, the whole system has gotten so messed up NO ONE has any true clue.
Human beings trying to play God. The G20 Summit is another desperate attempt for the U.S. Fed and U.S. Treasury to ask the International Cartel the same question they always ask, "What do we do NOW?".
Well, if Europe is any indication.. get this, they only way they can recapitalize their banks, is to sell assets.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/market-slumps-after-european-banks-admit-they-cantwont-raise-capital-will-proceed-asset-liquida
Market Slumps After European Banks Admit They Can't/Won't Raise Capital; Will Proceed With Asset Liquidations Instead
No loans are forthcoming. No one has a clue. And they're at the upper upper echelons!
Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, Let the bodies hit the................................FLOOOOOORRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I see your point. It would be like you and me selling our furniture to pay our electric bill. At some point in time, we run out of furniture... and the electricity gets turned off anyway.
Yes, and it's money that got severely devalued due to inflation, so in fact Chase got to pay back LESS then what was given.
Talk about a deal for them!