Dow up 450 points!!!

[heights unknown]

But...the FDIC is effective only up to a certain point (insurance deposit money to cover those account losses); in other words, there is only so much money the FDIC has to cover those losses/failures.  This is why the Feds (though I in general and normally disagree) must intervene because this crises is getting ready to spiral out of control, and if the Feds don't intervene, this crises could eat up all of the insurance deposits to cover those losses if not fixed now, and then we will have a nationwide and worldwide emergency.  It is not proper nor appropriate, in my personal opinion, for the federal government to intervene in business or commercial affairs, however, in times of crises or emergency, where it affects the financial health of the economy and/or the stock market, I will allow it.

Heights Unknown

[heights unknown]

I respectfully disagree Troll, and we are all entitled of course to our opinions.  In my OPINION there is no need for the President to have ALL OUT POWER in times of emergency; though the text of the NSPD states that the three branches would work together with the President vice one over the other it is clear that ONE MAN will be DICTATING all of the government's affairs and decision making which in my opinion is DICTATORSHIP.  This is not how the American government is supposed to work, emergency or none.

Heights Unknown

Read the document.  This is not what it says....

It is the policy of the United States to maintain a comprehensive and effective continuity capability composed of Continuity of Operations and Continuity of Government programs in order to ensure the preservation of our form of government under the Constitution and the continuing performance of National Essential Functions under all conditions.

I still respectfully disagree. I respect President Bush as our Commander In Chief, but I just don't (respectfully) trust him.  Sorry this is just my take on the matter.  I won't discuss this issue anymore.

Heights Unknown

[Charleston native]

But...the FDIC is effective only up to a certain point (insurance deposit money to cover those account losses); in other words, there is only so much money the FDIC has to cover those losses/failures.  This is why the Feds (though I in general and normally disagree) must intervene because this crises is getting ready to spiral out of control, and if the Feds don't intervene, this crises could eat up all of the insurance deposits to cover those losses if not fixed now, and then we will have a nationwide and worldwide emergency.  It is not proper nor appropriate, in my personal opinion, for the federal government to intervene in business or commercial affairs, however, in times of crises or emergency, where it affects the financial health of the economy and/or the stock market, I will allow it.

I can understand and appreciate your concern that if the FDIC actually applied its job in conjunction with the bank failures, it might eat up all of the insurance deposits.

My next question would be how does membership to the FDIC work? Do banks pay annual dues to the agency to continue coverage? What does it do with that money (does it draw interest, etc.)?

If the FDIC has some sort of cash flow, I wouldn't be too worried about the insurance deposits being taken away. Using the FDIC in this case would indeed weaken it, leaving it unable to insure other institutions that fail in the future. However, the underlying question is how much can the agency take?

[heights unknown]

I dunno, Heights.

A few people were being called marxists and socialists on this site for suggesting things like municipal internet services, or civil defense measures being re-implemented.

One especially obnoxious poster was describing a candidate as a 'dangerous marxist' as recently as five days ago, for suggesting that the government actually pay its bills and fullfill its constitutional functions.

How are these same people now justifying the largest marxist bailout in the history of mankind?

just curious?

And where is all this money going to come from?

After all, we certainly couldnt afford health care, and that was only 1/30th of the cost.

More, after coffee.

O.K.

Heights Unknown

[Driven1]

Meanwhile, the smart money is buying:

why, thank you!!    the port was up 7.1% today (after being down cumulative 9% since Monday - i had some in cash earlier and started buying more on the drop days).

up another 11.5% today so far.

banks are killing it for me again.

[Driven1]

just finished putting client orders in for 2 and half hours straight (all buys).  exhausted.  i am actually optimistic we have now seen the worst - as far as the bear market is concerned.

[Driven1]

Meaning that you thing the 'bear market' is over or that you think it is NOT over?

i think that it is over...lol - i just saw that i typed "pessimistic" instead of "optimistic".   correcting now.

[RiversideGator]

exactly civil.

I got this in my email, dont know the original author:

How many times do we have to hear:

We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to fix Social Security.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to fix Medicare.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to provide health care to ALL Americans.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to help out Americans losing their homes.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to help all our veterans returning from war.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to rescue "no child left behind".

BUT...

We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out Bears Stearns.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out AIG.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to pay for an unnecessary TRILLION DOLLAR war.

When the LITTLE GUY needs help, they scornfully say, "GET A JOB!"
But when one of their BIG GUY CRONIES need a bailout, what do they say? SURE, NO PROBLEM. Where's the checkbook?

"But what about the debt we're leaving on the backs of our childen and their future?"
"Children? WHOSE Children? OUR children won't have to pay for this. YOUR children will."

The Administrations has had their hands in our pockets for well over 8 years.
Now they are robbing us blind IN BROAD DAYLIGHT and smiling about it!!!!
The same players have shown their true colors and now they expect us to vote them back into office?

Oops.  Looks like Stephen's candidate, Obama, supports the Bush bailout while McCain condemns it.  Will Stephen be changing his vote now:

McCain Condemns `Lax' Rules as Obama Backs Bush Economy Plans

By Kim Chipman and Hans Nichols

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain condemned ``lax'' regulation and urged the Federal Reserve to ``get out of the business of bailouts,'' as his Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama supported Bush administration plans to address the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

While backing efforts by the Fed and U.S. Treasury to ease the turmoil on Wall Street, Obama said he will hold off crafting a more detailed plan until he meets with his economic advisers.

Obama gained in the polls this week as the global financial crisis cost investors more than $3 trillion in market value, and the focus of the presidential campaign shifted to the economy.

McCain, speaking in Green Bay, Wisconsin, today, criticized regulators who, he said, have been ``egregiously lax'' in protecting the American public.

`The Federal Reserve should get back to its core business of responsibly managing our money supply and inflation,'' he added. That would lead to a strong dollar, he said, to reduce energy and food prices ``and get this economy moving again.''

He also expanded on his call yesterday for the firing of President George W. Bush's chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox.

McCain proposed creation of a Mortgage and Financial Institutions Trust to ease the crisis. The agency, to be housed within the Treasury Department, would identify troubled institutions and strengthen them before they become insolvent, the McCain campaign said.

Obama is meeting with senior economic advisers in Coral Gables, Florida, this morning, including former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett will participate by phone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aRK5zGMLJWl4&refer=home

[RiversideGator]

Well its tricky isnt it?

I say let them fail.  Prosecute every last one of the profiteers and executives who took their golden parachutes.

Take away their ill gotten gains and begin paying back the taxpayers whose money is bailing them out.

When the positions were reversed, they visited the same attitude on their own investments and debtors.

Perhaps there is presently capital in the world besides the easy chinese money.

If we are going to borrow however, then dont borrow from an economy strong enough to overpower us, and thereby put our nation's competitive future in thrall.  Its poison.

Let it fall, restructure, and start again from scratch.

The things that made this country prosperous and great are still there, and with our strategic alliances with NAFTA and NATO,  we will go through a hard time, a VERY hard time, but at the end of it we will be stronger and wholly self sustaining.

The Japanese suffered just such a humiliation at the end of WW2, and they recovered.

Stephendare;

I respect your posts and opinions.  But I must ask, did you go to college?  You must have been taught the basics of economics while in High School and College.  Do you have any idea what would happen if we just let these banks (especially the large ones) fail? 

No.

[Driven1]

market is not the economy btw.

[tufsu1]

And incidentally, considering that you were the prime cheerleader on this site for EVERY ONE OF THESE CATASTROPHIC policies, one would think you would keep your head down.

Stephen...River's head is down...its in the sand!

[RiversideGator]

And incidentally, considering that you were the prime cheerleader on this site for EVERY ONE OF THESE CATASTROPHIC policies, one would think you would keep your head down.

Stephen...River's head is down...its in the sand!

Speaking of heads in sand, here is a great letter to the editor which sums up the origins of the subprime crisis:  government forces banks to lend to deadbeats:

We are all talking about subprime loans and the havoc they've wreaked on the economy, but no one is talking about why banks give out these loans -- they are required to by law. Since the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, Congress requires banks to offer loans to minorities in low-income areas, even if the clients can't make down payments, don't have good credit histories, or even employment histories.

Since these clients are high-credit risks, the only loans lenders can offer are high-interest loans that don't require a down payment or good credit history. These loans frequently default.

Iin order to cut down on the number of subprime loans an institution must make, it must cut down on all loans, because its subprime business is a proportion of its overall business.

Are we willing to crash our economy over some misplaced idealism? Congress must rescind the CRA or this problem will continue beyond today's bailouts.

http://online.wsj.com/public/page/letters.html

[BridgeTroll]

http://townhall.com/columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/09/19/the_partys_over

The Party's Over
Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, September 19, 2008

The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people's wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another.

The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The "Omnipower" and "Indispensable Nation" we heard about in all the hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history.

Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of market economics, a failure of conservatism.

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko ("Greed Is Good!") capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means.

Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess -- that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

"Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government -- the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt -- all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party's over

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday's bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into "global companies" and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or "bomb, bomb, bomb," with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

What the Greatest Generation handed down to us -- the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved -- the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

[Driven1]

BUNCH OF BAD NEWS!!  but i'm up 20% on it over the last 2 days.  bring on the bad news!!! 

[Driven1]

btw...did you see the other news??

London markets record greatest surge in history...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/09/19/bcnftse219.xml

Russian markets suspended due to massive surge...
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080919/eu_russia_markets.html?.v=13