I went to bed in the US and woke up in France

[Wagner]

Socialism refers to any of various economic and political concepts of state or collective (i.e. public) ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods and services, some of which have been developed into more or less highly articulated theories and/or praxis.


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The House today passed a massive housing bill after the White House announced that President Bush would sign it despite his opposition to $3.9 billion in aid to communities hit hard by a housing crisis that has spawned 1.5 million foreclosures.

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[AzNMpower32]

Perhaps the US gov't could subsidise car payments.

[Wagner]

Look at it this way, out of the 55M or so mortgages in the US...52M are paid on time.....should we really bail these people out across the board?

No.

Send Freddie and Fannie into receivership as you would with any other company. I wrote both my US Senators and House rep....did you

[AzNMpower32]

Originally Posted by Wagner

Send Freddie and Fannie into receivership as you would with any other company. I wrote both my US Senators and House rep....did you

No point. They're still stuck in Northern VA traffic.

[Wagner]

Convenient how they don't mention how they are paying for it

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/23/real...uide/index.htm

[JGQ]

I lost track of how many bail outs have been handed by the government this past year:
- Bear Stern (by backing JP Morgan in the acquisition)
- Feds opening the discount window directly to investment banks and later extending it.
- Feds Slashing interest rates on several occasions regardless of its impact on the dollar or inflation. YES, I see this as a bail out to Wall Street that keeps advocating it simply because they want a little bounce in the market regardless of the long term impact.
- This bill being discussed.

I’m sure there are others that I can’t remember!

[Meiac09]

Kind of the "every kid gets a trophy" even when they completely screw up the game.

morons

[erick_c]

Brian Regan

"Free snow cone at the end of the game. The people that play half game get a whole snow cone and the people that play whole game get a whole snow cone, so I'd rather play half game. The snow cone is always whole, whole snow cone"

[mrkbbd]

We were talking about this today at work and came to a consensus. Instead of the 85% refinance, refinance the money owed on the house with a fixed mortgage at whatever the FED gets money at so it really doesn't cost the government very much and ONLY bailout people that are going to foreclose on their primary residence. People with multiple houses / investment houses should not be bailed out because the principle of an investment is that if it is smart, it makes you money, if it's not you lose, that's the game.

[Wagner]

Mariel Boat lift of 2008, but this time the US government deals with financial institutions instead of Cuba. Think it through. If you're a business and the government says "look we'll help you out, we'll back the loans for you..just send them on over", which do you send? The ones you expect to pay back or the ones you believe will foreclose? You send the foreclosing ones in record number and make the US government the largest lender of sub-primes in history. I swear, these elected officials get dumber by the day. As my uncle says about Golf: "Sometimes when you hit it off the course, you just need to take your medicine and put it back in the fairway". US citizens need to learn this, that because you made a mistake that was not 100% your fault, doesn't mean you get help. Sometimes life is hard. I didn't get a stimulus check, but I do get to help pay for people who couldn't do math...what a great system, can't wait to go to work today.

I'm curious to see what my senators and rep tell me about the letters I sent them yesterday. Probably a standardized blow off. At least I can almost guarantee that from my two D senators

Oh and BTW: one of the largest holders of Fannie/Freddie stock is China. Nice that the taxpayers can come up with a way to bail out shareholders..well..actually a country. And you have to love our POS Treasury secretary, the same one who said the stock market has really nothing to do with oil prices.


Now this: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390022,00.html minimum wage increases...is yet another in a line of dumb mistakes by Congress. You have declared that the minimum wage go up. Ask yourself this, what industries rely on the minimum wage as their backbone? Well that would be grocery chains, restaurants and small businesses. So these same institutions, the ones not making a profit right now because of the economy, have to pay more to employees by federal mandate. Hmm, wonder what makes you more money, minimum wage at under $6.00 or not having a job at all?