5 ms·

The best description of the fed bailout

114 points by myth_drannon 18y ago

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
lemonysnicket 18y ago
i am still laughing. that is the funniest thing i have read in a while
swombat 18y ago
Wow, an article about the bailout that's actually relevant to hackers ;-) Good surprise.
vaksel 18y ago
its not that big, should have pasted it: Dear American: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred. Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds. Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
- MicahWedemeyer 18y ago
  Yes, but the formatting is important. The screwed up line breaks are not an accident!
ckinnan 18y ago
Here's another good one: http://www.buymyshitpile.com/ http://www.buymyshitpile.com/
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
LostInTheWoods 18y ago
Errr, Americans seem to need somebody to blame for this crisis. But before we lynch Bernake and Paulson, we should all take a good look in the mirror.
- pmorici 18y ago
  The people who really have a potential to be screwed here are those who have a positive net savings as apposed to those who are mortgaged to the hilt.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    Depends on whether you believe this'll be inflationary or deflationary. If the government decides to inflate to pay off the bailout, then it sucks for savers and is awesome for mortgagees. But if their intervention isn't enough to halt the deflationary pressure of all these financial institutions failing, then it'll be catastrophic for debtors and good for savers. People who held cash in the depression (and didn't see it wiped out by a bank run) gained close to 4x their money in about 2 years, which is as good or better than most other bubbles in history. That's relative to consumer prices: relative to asset prices (like stocks), it was nearly a 10x return.
    - albeit 18y ago
      all the more reason to stabilize the dollar at its current value. Its the inflation of the dollar that set all of this bad investment into motion.
- chaostheory 18y ago
  umm have you actually seen the terms of the bailout that Paulson is trying to sell? the bailout “shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.” - the key words are 'at any one time' meaning this is a blank check for Paulson that he can just keep on drawing It gets even better: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" so Paulson gets a blank check and we can't see what he's doing with our money - awesome! sign me up to top it off with icing: "The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation... designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;" so totalitarian socialism replaces free market enterprise? o yeah what happens to the dollar?
furiouslol 18y ago
It would have been more convincing if everything is in CAPS.
ntoshev 18y ago
How does this contribute to your understanding of anything? Flagged.
cturner 18y ago
Have you noticed that one of the main results of this saving of things which are "too big too fail" is a concentration of those big businesses into even bigger business, a greater proportion of which are now too big to fail? The rhetoric we had become used to hearing - that liquidity is subtle but very important (which it is) has changed to language of protection and we see policy responses to this. For example - the bans on non-naked shorting hits the liquidity of the options market (because it's harder to do things like hedging when you want to deal in options) and leads to further stagnation.
time_management 18y ago
This is a generational phenomenon. The housing-market racket of the late '90s and early 2000s was a case of a large, dominant generation (Baby Boomers; b. 1943-58ish) enriching itself at the expense of a small, recessive generation (Gen X; 1958-80). It occurred during a period when the Baby Boomers were selling houses (that they inherited from parents, or that they were selling in order to downscale to smaller, more maintainable dwellings), when young families (Xers) were buying them, and when Millennials were (thankfully, from my perspective) still renting. All of these bailouts, in my opinion, are the same thing. Bush-style "conservatism" is clearly not future-oriented, and not very conservative either. Cutting taxes while starting a war? Come on. It's a bunch of obnoxious Baby Boomers with no foresight plundering the future.

114 points by myth_drannon 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

lemonysnicket 18y ago

i am still laughing. that is the funniest thing i have read in a while

swombat 18y ago

Wow, an article about the bailout that's actually relevant to hackers ;-) Good surprise.

vaksel 18y ago

its not that big, should have pasted it: Dear American: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred. Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds. Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

MicahWedemeyer 18y ago
Yes, but the formatting is important. The screwed up line breaks are not an accident!

ckinnan 18y ago

Here's another good one: http://www.buymyshitpile.com/ http://www.buymyshitpile.com/

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

LostInTheWoods 18y ago

Errr, Americans seem to need somebody to blame for this crisis. But before we lynch Bernake and Paulson, we should all take a good look in the mirror.

pmorici 18y ago
The people who really have a potential to be screwed here are those who have a positive net savings as apposed to those who are mortgaged to the hilt.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Depends on whether you believe this'll be inflationary or deflationary. If the government decides to inflate to pay off the bailout, then it sucks for savers and is awesome for mortgagees. But if their intervention isn't enough to halt the deflationary pressure of all these financial institutions failing, then it'll be catastrophic for debtors and good for savers. People who held cash in the depression (and didn't see it wiped out by a bank run) gained close to 4x their money in about 2 years, which is as good or better than most other bubbles in history. That's relative to consumer prices: relative to asset prices (like stocks), it was nearly a 10x return.
  - albeit 18y ago
    all the more reason to stabilize the dollar at its current value. Its the inflation of the dollar that set all of this bad investment into motion.
chaostheory 18y ago
umm have you actually seen the terms of the bailout that Paulson is trying to sell? the bailout “shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.” - the key words are 'at any one time' meaning this is a blank check for Paulson that he can just keep on drawing It gets even better: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" so Paulson gets a blank check and we can't see what he's doing with our money - awesome! sign me up to top it off with icing: "The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation... designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;" so totalitarian socialism replaces free market enterprise? o yeah what happens to the dollar?

furiouslol 18y ago

It would have been more convincing if everything is in CAPS.

ntoshev 18y ago

How does this contribute to your understanding of anything? Flagged.

cturner 18y ago

Have you noticed that one of the main results of this saving of things which are "too big too fail" is a concentration of those big businesses into even bigger business, a greater proportion of which are now too big to fail? The rhetoric we had become used to hearing - that liquidity is subtle but very important (which it is) has changed to language of protection and we see policy responses to this. For example - the bans on non-naked shorting hits the liquidity of the options market (because it's harder to do things like hedging when you want to deal in options) and leads to further stagnation.

time_management 18y ago

This is a generational phenomenon. The housing-market racket of the late '90s and early 2000s was a case of a large, dominant generation (Baby Boomers; b. 1943-58ish) enriching itself at the expense of a small, recessive generation (Gen X; 1958-80). It occurred during a period when the Baby Boomers were selling houses (that they inherited from parents, or that they were selling in order to downscale to smaller, more maintainable dwellings), when young families (Xers) were buying them, and when Millennials were (thankfully, from my perspective) still renting. All of these bailouts, in my opinion, are the same thing. Bush-style "conservatism" is clearly not future-oriented, and not very conservative either. Cutting taxes while starting a war? Come on. It's a bunch of obnoxious Baby Boomers with no foresight plundering the future.