Here's your partial bill, Mr. Taxpayer...

[BraneMatter]

Here is just a partial list of the monies recently appropriated (either through Congress or special emergency powers) by Treasury and the FED to deal with the current economic crisis:


Bear Stearns takeover and fold into JP Morgan. Cost to FED = $29 billion.

28 Day Term Auction Facility. Cost to FED = $100 billion.

28 Day Term Repurchase Agreements. Cost to FED = $150 billion.

28 Day Term Securities Lending Facility. Cost to FED = $200 billion.

Overnight Primary Dealer Credit Facility. Cost to FED = $262 billion.

28 Day TSLF Option Auctions. Cost to FED = $50 billion.

84 Day Term Auction Facility. Cost to FED = $25 billion.

Federal Housing Finance Agency (Fannie/Freddie nationalization). Cost to Treasury = $500 billion.

AIG nationalization. Cost to FED = $85 billion.

MBS purchases. Cost to Treasury = $200 billion.

Swap line with European Central Bank. Cost to FED = $120 billion.

Swap line with Swiss Central Bank. Cost to FED = $30 billion.

Swap line with Bank of Japan. Cost to FED = $60 billion.

Swap line with Bank of England. Cost to FED = $40 billion.

Swap line with Bank of Canada. Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Asset Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Liquidity Facility. Cost to FED = $73 billion.

Conversion of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to banks. Cost to FED = unknown.

Swap line with Reserve Bank of Australia. Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Swap line with Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweeden). Cost to FED = $10 billion.

Swap line with Danmarks Nationalbank (Central Bank of Denmark). Cost to FED = $5 billion.

Swap line with Norges Bank (Central Bank fo Norway). Cost to FED = $5 billion.

(Source for above figures (http://reconstitution.us/rcnew/?p=2145))

In addition to the above, add another $38 Billion in bailout money for AIG (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09insure.html?em)extended on 10-09-08

Also, the following two FED facilities (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akmNl5m.rV_Y)have been created under special emergency powers:

1. $900 Billion (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0JXpRxlaAb8&refer=home)for auctions of cash loans to banks (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akZy5_CDTvuk)to unfreeze lending.

2. A special facility fund set up with the New York Federal Reserve Bank to buy commercial paper (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akZy5_CDTvuk). Cost to FED= unknown

And finally, the bailout bill just passed by Congress and signed by Bush: $700 Billion, plus $110 Billion in pork.

As one can plainly see, we are already into the trillions, and this list is NOT complete. For example, it does not include the $300 Billion dollar Housing Bill passed last July (http://wallstreetpit.com/congress-approves-300-billion-housing-rescue-bill/), also to deal with the sub-prime crisis. Also not included above is the IndyMac bailout (http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/11/fdic-closes-indymac-second-biggest-bank-failure-in-history/)this summer that cost the FED between $4 to $8 Billion dollars, and the WaMU seizure and fold into JP Morgan, amount of FED money involved unknown.

The FED and Treasury are spending money so fast every day now that it is hard for me to keep up with it, or find it all in the news reports. It's just staggering, and the worst of the bill may be yet to come.

Better explain to your kids and grandkids just how much in debt they are now, thanks to the Democrats and Republicans, and all their Wall Street gangster buddies.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Treasury is thinking about also guaranteeing ALL bank debt, which amounts to unknown billions more. (http://biz.yahoo.com/wallstreet/081010/sb122360336021121827_id.html?.v=2)

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I thought we didn't have enough money for Social Security and Medicaid? Why is it that we can come up with 1.5 trillion dollars for corporate welfare (in addition to the $100 billion we already spend), but nothing for welfare that might actually do some good? Not one senior citizen or child would end up poor if we sent even 2/3 of that as a dividend. (Inflation excluded)

[spice756]

Here is just a partial list of the monies recently appropriated (either through Congress or special emergency powers) by Treasury and the FED to deal with the current economic crisis:



The problem is people are poor and can't get loans to buy a house or car and there is economic problems do to people not getting loans .So people will not go to the bank and so the banks are not doing well and so is the market not doing well.:(:(

Has you can see the market is not doing good.People are not going to the bank.:cursing:
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6050283.html


WASHINGTON — Fear and foreboding took hold Thursday on Wall Street, as the market again plunged and investors became convinced that the nation is on the verge of a deep and prolonged recession. The decline continued in Asia, where stocks plummeted in early trading today.

The government took steps toward an extraordinary public investment in U.S. banks and General Motors' stock fell to its lowest price since 1950 on fears it will not be able to weather the downturn. Share prices fell across every industry and for each of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average, which was down 678.91, or 7.3 percent, at 8,579.19. The declines came on the one-year anniversary of the Dow's closing high.
"I've never seen a panic like this," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. "I've seen stock market drops, but not an overall panic."

The plunge came in a stomach-churning 90 minutes. The Dow was down just 140 points in the early afternoon. But then, wave after wave of selling began to roll through the market.
Stocks are on track for their worst year since 1937.

"It's a domino effect. Stocks are falling out of bed. There is distrust in the market and distrust in the government that is trying to heal this," said Peter Cardillo, economist with New York-based Avalon Partners.

Continuing its efforts to stanch the damage, the Bush administration said Thursday that it is working on a plan to inject government cash into some of the nation's troubled banks. Meanwhile, global economic policymakers are gathering in Washington today for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings, and will try to find coordinated responses.

President Bush is scheduled to make a statement about the crisis this morning in the Rose Garden, the White House said late Thursday. He also will take the unusual step of meeting with finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized countries Saturday.

Press secretary Dana Perino said Bush would "assure the American people that they should be confident that economic officials are aggressively taking every action to stabilize our financial system."
While the stock market was the most visible sign of the distress, a more significant one may have been a rise in interest rates for short-term lending among banks. The spike came despite Wednesday's cut in the target interest rate of the world's major central banks, suggesting that banks are more fearful than ever of lending to each other.

Credit markets provided modest good news, however, as the interest rates dropped on commercial paper, a form of debt that companies use to finance short-term cash flow. The Federal Reserve announced a new program to take on that debt Tuesday.

Some of the worst damage was among U.S. automakers. J.D. Power and Associates said that the global auto industry may experience an "outright collapse" in 2009. Then the S&P Ratings Agency put GM debt on a credit watch. GM stock fell 31 percent to $4.76, its lowest since 1950, and Ford stock was down 22 percent.

No market patience

Investors have become frustrated that the government's efforts to tackle the financial crisis, including plans to buy up billions in toxic mortgage debt and a global interest rate cut, have yet to loosen the credit markets.

The problem seems to be that many of the government actions, such as the $700 billion U.S. financial system bailout passed a week ago, take time to go into effect. "These programs take weeks if not months to implement, and the market is responding within minutes," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

Meanwhile, darker clouds have moved to new parts of the economy. Trouble in sectors like steel production and heavy machinery, which until recently were growing strongly, has contributed to the mounting view that the U.S. economy has tumbled into a significant recession. Economists predict that the economy will contract until the middle of 2009.

There is a bright spot for American consumers: Oil prices also continued a steep two-month decline Thursday, falling $2.36 to settle at $86.59 a barrel as traders bet that the slowing global economy will reduce demand for energy worldwide.

But even that was bad news for the stock market, as energy shares fell. Exxon Mobil and Chevron each fell 12 percent.
Consumers have cut back sharply on spending, in what will be the first quarterly decline in 17 years when the government tally is in for the third quarter.

To offset this shrinkage, the Democratic leadership in Congress is "seriously considering" a large fiscal stimulus proposal, which would send a significant amount of money to states and cities. "We have to prop up consumption," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview.

The new proposal would be far greater than the $60 billion stimulus package that the House passed in September, Frank said. The Senate has not acted on the earlier bill, which was dwarfed in attention and scope by the sums being pledged to Wall Street companies and commercial banks.
Some attribute Thursday's market plunge to mutual funds' waiting until mid-afternoon to execute sell orders from a growing number of investors who are cutting their exposure or bailing out of the market altogether. Others say that hedge funds, which have leveraged returns in recent years by using borrowed money, are having to sell holdings to raise collateral against their borrowings.

Still others say that computerized trading, which has grown significantly in recent years, often kicks in later in the day, when certain thresholds are breached.

Short-selling

What happened on Thursday partly reflects the unintended consequences of regulators' attempts to bolster stock prices several weeks ago, when the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned short-selling in nearly 1,000 stocks.

That restriction was lifted at midnight on Wednesday. Short-selling is a practice in which investors sell shares they do not own in the hopes of buying them back later at a lower price. Many money managers use it to hedge their investments against future losses. Analysts said those investors were probably forced to sell shares short Thursday to protect themselves.


Robert Solow, who won a Nobel Prize in 1987 for his work on economic growth, said the "potential for instability was always there" but he is surprised at the magnitude of the problems. "I'm as puzzled as anyone else," he said. "I don't have any particular wisdom to sell."

[BraneMatter]

Buying up the toxic debt, recapitalization of the banks, etc., these only address the symptoms of the disease, which is capitalism:



The circuit of capitalist production depends, among other things, on credit. The solvency of one link in the chain depends upon the solvency of another. The chain can be broken at numerous points. Sooner or later, credit must be paid off in cash. This fact is all too frequently forgotten by those who become indebted during the process of capitalist upswing. In the first phase of capitalist expansion, credit acts as a spur to production: ‘the development of the productive process extends the credit, and credit leads to an extension of industrial and commercial operations.' -- Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3


All this fictitious capital, like the creation of money by the FED, is based on debt. With "financialization" that debt, through all sorts of exotic financial instruments, is magnified to ridiculous extremes by greed, and so the whole economy is entangled and made dependent. When the crisis occurs, does it only end when they have squeezed all they can out of the working class to pay the bill? They really don't give a damn how many people loose their homes and farms, or stand in breadlines:



In a system of production, where the entire continuity of the reproduction process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur - a tremendous rush for means of payment - when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity. At first glance, therefore, the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis. And in fact it is only a question of the convertibility of bills of exchange into money. But the majority of these bills represent actual sales and purchases, whose extension far beyond the needs of society is, after all, the basis of the whole crisis. At the same time, an enormous quantity of these bills of exchange represents plain swindle, which now reaches the light of day and collapses; furthermore, unsuccessful speculation with the capital of other people; finally, commodity-capital which has depreciated or is completely unsaleable, or returns that can never more be realized again. The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values. Incidentally, everything here appears distorted, since in this paper world, the real price and its real basis appear nowhere, but only bullion, metal coin, notes, bills of exchange, securities. Particularly in centres where the entire money business of the country is concentrated, like London, does this distortion become apparent; the entire process becomes incomprehensible; it is less so in centres of production.

...Let us also disregard these sham transactions and speculations, which the credit system favours. Then, a crisis could only be explained as the result of a disproportion of production between the consumption of the capitalists and their accumulation. But as matters stand, the replacement of the capital invested in production depends largely upon the consuming power of the non-producing classes; while the consuming power of the workers is limited partly by the laws of wages, partly by the fact that they are used only as long as they can be profitably employed by the capitalist class. The ultimate reason for all real crises always have remained the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit. -- Karl Marx, Capital, vol.3 (bold mine)


Granted, our economy today is far more complex, but capitalism has not changed its "stripes." It is amazing how much Marx was spot-on in his analysis.

Now the big talk is all about government "nationalizing" the banks, but I think they have it exactly backwards! I think we will just be putting Goldman- Sachs and Bank of America even more in charge of the government than they already are (look who runs Treasury now, a day trader!), and that ain't socialism!

As far as how effective at stemming the crisis the steps already taken have been, note that the LIBOR just keep rising. So much for unlocking credit... and a lot more has been spent already than the $700 Billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) amount that is yet to come into play. As far as "confidence" goes, if you were a greedy capitalist banker, would you trust another capitalist banker with a big loan? If the other guy is a big "casino player" like you are, then you know you will get repaid only if the other guy gets lucky!

The next time someone tells you that "government is the problem," ask them WHO the government is. Is it not supposed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? If government is the problem, then it is NOT government of, by, and for the people, is it? So, you see, the very phrase "government is the problem" can only make sense within the context of the capitalist system, which is AGAINST the people.

One thing's for sure, Obama is no FDR - unfortunately - but he is under attack much in the same way as the Wall Street crowd and religious nuts tried to smear FDR as a communist for the New Deal. Will we see anything like the great strikes of 1936-7? I doubt it. The factories of that era are all gone now, or moved overseas, and GM is on the brink of bankruptcy. Will we even see the mass street actions of the Sixties repeated? I dunno. It's a different generation now, so how to predict?

[BraneMatter]

FDIC DEPOSIT INSURANCE NOT A SURE THING

We hear the parting words from television commercials and radio advertisements: "Member FDIC Insured." The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been insuring our money, our livelihood, up to $100,000. This was supposed to make working-class people feel safe and comfortable. But when a series of huge banks collapsed, falling like dominos one after the other, individual financial safety was put in serious jeopardy. - MORE
(http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=139&a=8382)


Treasuries are also supposed to be a "safe" refuge for your money, backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government," which is now the world's biggest debtor nation!

And just WHO is it, that does all this "insuring" and "backing," anyways? Ultimately, it's always all of us working class stiffs that pay! That's who will have to pay-up when the you-know-what hits the fan and the rich bastards have taken all the money and ran, leaving systemic bankruptcy in their wake! They damned sure won't use their money to pay for the failure they caused.

I can see why the sale of home safes are at an all time high! The capitalist system has proven itself untrustworthy, and why trust the ones who are making war on you?

The way Bush just talked in his speech this a.m., anyone spreading lies or negative rumors that could damage the financial markets now, may be charged with a serious crime! Dunno exactly what that means, but it don't sound good for free speech...

[Herman]

I thought we didn't have enough money for Social Security and Medicaid? Why is it that we can come up with 1.5 trillion dollars for corporate welfare (in addition to the $100 billion we already spend), but nothing for welfare that might actually do some good? Not one senior citizen or child would end up poor if we sent even 2/3 of that as a dividend. (Inflation excluded)

Because if they did, people would start supporting what Americans call "Socialism"!

Of course, to us it's called "social-democracy".

[Psy]

One thing's for sure, Obama is no FDR - unfortunately - but he is under attack much in the same way as the Wall Street crowd and religious nuts tried to smear FDR as a communist for the New Deal. Will we see anything like the great strikes of 1936-7? I doubt it. The factories of that era are all gone now, or moved overseas, and GM is on the brink of bankruptcy. Will we even see the mass street actions of the Sixties repeated? I dunno. It's a different generation now, so how to predict?
This is a world wide crisis, not even China is immune.

[BraneMatter]

Lehman Bonds valued at only 8.625 cents on the dollar!!

Here's the blub from Bloomberg:



SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- An auction to work out the value of Lehman Brothers bonds for derivatives traders valued the debt of the bankrupt brokerage firm at 8.625 cents on the dollar, according to Markit and Creditex, the administrators of the auction. Earlier estimates put a higher value on Lehman bonds. That means sellers of protection in the credit default swap market may have to pay out more than expected to settle the trades.


Now we know why they are called "illiquid" or "toxic" assets!

In other news today, both GM and Ford announced further slowdowns are expected through next year, and both said they are NOT considering bankruptcy and that they have enough assets to ride out the storm. I think Lehman Bros. said the same thing a few weeks before they went belly-up. CNBC reports this was the worst week in stock market history.

The good news: oil is at $78/barrel... for now...

[peaccenicked]

The cost to the tax payer reminds me of feudalism, perhaps piracy
http://inthesenewtimes.com/2008/10/10/city-gang-pulls-off-500-bullion-heist/
:huh: