That is what the AIG Bailout is going to cost:
The Federal Reserve plans to offer an $85 billion bridge loan to the American International Group in return for control of the ailing insurance giant, people briefed on the matter said Tuesday night.
In an intense discussion at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Tuesday afternoon, the Fed and a group of executives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and other firms agreed that a banking syndicate to provide the $75 billion in emergency financing could not be arranged by Tuesday night.
If the Fed intervenes, it would be an eleventh-hour bailout of A.I.G., whose debt downgrades by major credit ratings agencies could have sparked a debilitating need for additional capital.
What else could we do with 85 billion?
mak
What couldn’t we do with $85 billion?
Walker
Loan it to someone who might be able to pay us back.
Why does Paulson still think this is a liquidity issue?
Ned R.
Throw one hell of a pizza party.
The Grand Panjandrum
I could pay off my wife’s Mastercard (or at least as far as it would go).
Loneaok
6 months in Iraq!
MobiusKlein
Is this a legitimate attempt to save us from meltdown, or just stave it off until after Nov 4th?
LiberalTarian
Time to start taxing the rich.
Brian J
It is a bridge loan, so wouldn’t that mean the money will come back at some point?
This seems like an important point:
If that’s the case, then it makes sense to do what the Fed is doing. I don’t particularly like the idea of bail outs, either, but if it’s going to prevent a lot of panic, maybe it’s worthwhile.
jnfr
Here’s a site where you can see what you could buy with the whole $3 trillion.
PeterJ
I did something very similar earlier today, I counted on the cost of Katrina in terms of months in Iraq.
The cost of Katrina was about $81 billion.
So the cost of Friedman unit equals either one Katrina or one AIG bailout.
wasabi gasp
This is great news for Michael D’s 401k!!!
Xenos
Ah. The Willie Sutton theory of national finance.
Unfortunately, it is all we have left, as the rich have robbed the rest of us blind. Either we heavily tax the ‘successful’, or get used to a new feudalism.
Downpuppy
The size of the thing is stunning. So what happens when the next 3 go down & the Fed has everything tied up in AIG?
Either it turns into a horrible gaping loss, or, worse, it succeeds. If it succeeds, a government run insurance company, which insures a bunch of financial crap that should never have been insured in the first place, destroys all the companies that were doing insurance right.
Joshua Norton
Again with the freaking bridges?
Brian J
Which three are you talking about?
sparky
you ungrateful peasants! you think it’s easy to keep extorting increasingly worthless dollars from you to prop up our oligarchy? just last week we had to spend 5 trillion on our own “institutions” and now we have to buy up this crap because Hank crapped all over the place. hell, we even had to kick our lackeys err staff out of the meeting tonight!
get off the lawn. all of them.
ppcli
You whiners. Don’t you know that McCain is going to save over 85 billion in his first year by eliminating bear DNA studies.
ohollern
I’m not sure, but when we get around to bailing out WaMu do we get to charge them 29.99% interest? That’s what they raised my rate to (from 9%)in two months on a two hundred dollar balance that I was paying off religiously withought a single late payment.
dslak
It is a liquidity issue. Liquidity needs to be maintained until after November 4th. Bailing out AIG will at least maintain it for that long.
The Grand Panjandrum
What else? Get this dumbass a decent haircut and a girlfriend. Josh and the wild-eyed liberal cult followers at TPM have unearthed the future of the GOP. Watch the video BEFORE you read the article they link to for the story.
Brian J
What’s the over/under on how long before Palin starts saying shit like “I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks!’ to the Bridge to Nowhere, and I think AIG should tell the Federal Reserve the same thing”?
wasabi gasp
You could buy an abortion for everybody.
PC
I’ve got money on WaMu going down next.
Brian J
Did you default on any other payments?
PeakVT
Pop for 8500 3MW wind turbines – enough to power about 9 million homes.
Think about what the Iraq war would buy.
PeterJ
$85 billion would give you 50-200 bridges to nowhere, depending on the estimation of the cost of the bridge.
Brian J
As in, being taken over by the government, or by JP Morgan?
cleek
we could pay off 8500 Dr Evils
dadanarchist
As a taxpayer, and apparently now a part-owner of AIG, does that mean I should be expecting some shares to come with my tax return in April?
Ahhhh….
Socialism for the poor = evil
Socialism for the rich = sound fiscal policy
zuzu's petals
I heard on NPR that it’s not just American financial institutions that would be affected. European banks and pension systems are somehow tied in as well. Something to do with derivatives, I think.
Badtux
Uhm, folks, one thing that seems to be eluding you guys: the Federal Reserve didn’t get that $85 billion from taxes. The Federal Reserve literally printed it from thin air.
Now, given the amount of money currently vaporizing out of the economy because of the collapse of all these banks, the collapsing real estate market, etc., it’s arguable that this is not a *bad* thing. A deflationary spiral like 1930-1932 would be a disaster in so many ways that it’s depressing just to think about it (thus the term, “The Great Depression”). But it just irritates me when someone misses the point, which is that this is a deliberate effort to keep the currency inflated and that this money did not even exist until the Fed created it out of thin air…
– Badtux the Monetary Penguin
dslak
Badtux, do you have a link?
r€nato
fixed.
PeterJ
I’ve seen estimates that it would cost $20-$50 billion for a manned mission to Mars. On the other hand, I’ve seen estimates of $500-$1000 billion too.
I’m guessing the lower numbers are from those that bring pencils to space instead of inventing a pen you can write with in space… (And I know that this is an urban legend…)
Xenos
Badtux – How the hell do they know how to do this in such a way that it really avoids an inflationary or deflationary spiral? This is no Goldilocks scenario.
Jake
Joe Biden, is that you?
r€nato
after which the GOP can blame Obama for all the shit created on the GOP’s watch.
ThymeZone
Get a web server that works?
Jake
The same amount of money would likely expand the electrical grid to the point where MidWestern wind power would be viable.
That would seem to be another thing we should try. You know, when the country gets a fucking clue.
JGabriel
What the hell does that mean?
If it’s a loan, does that mean the Fed controls AIG until they pay it back?
Or, if the Fed controls AIG, does that mean they/we now own AIG?
If AIG goes under anyway, in 6 months or so, does that just become further evidence that government doesn’t work? If the Fed successfully takes control and AIG doesn’t go under, will the Pugs call it socialism?
Really, that sentence makes no sense. Either we take control, i.e. buy AIG, or it’s a loan.
It’ll be interesting to see how this deal develops. Interesting in the sense of “May you live in interesting times.
.
dadanarchist
Do you honestly think that’s ever gonna happen?
Chuck Butcher
Apparently AIG’s other businesses are solid and there would be sufficient capital without the credit downgrades and each downgrade increased their capital needs. Stopping a cascade of events might easily be worth the cost of this loan. Considering that the Fed is taking 80% control as collateral and the value of that collateral and it might be a very good bet.
I linked into a post of mine in another thread and while I am no fan whatever of socializing risks the consequences of letting this credit mess sort itself out on its own are horrid. There is a confluence of factors going on that could easily tip this nastiness into disaster. The power of the US economy is easily seen in the hits being taken overseas, this would be a global horror show if we go down.
I’ve made my living in construction for over 30 years and I’ve seen problems come and go, this could have just been a burst bubble, but the credit mess mixed into an aready soft employment market with it can make things truly nasty. Lehman Bros was done for, a short term loan was pointless, AIG is a bit of a different thing.
Jake
Win.
4tehlulz
Obligatory “THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN WITH A GOLD STANDARD LOL” fantasy.
dslak
I expect Neil Cavuto and Brit Hume to attribute it to “markets reacting negatively to Obama winning the election.”
r€nato
$85 billion = 708,333 GOP douchebags getting drugged and robbed by a woman or man they picked up while at the RNC.
Money well-spent.
Jake
I haven’t given up hope. We’ll know more in a few months.
JGabriel
Thymezone:
LOL. To be fair, it’s probably the software configuration, and not the server itself that’s causing the WordPress errors.
So maybe we should amend that to:
Get a consultant that can actually fix WordPress and configure it correctly.
.
wasabi gasp
Dasalotadooshbags!
Ted
Human on Mars in five years. Maybe quicker. With plenty left over.
JGabriel
What the flipping heck? There’s not even any fucking obscenities in that post. Or references to pharmaceutical enhancements.
.
r€nato
I agree… but, you know, I think more than a few of the folks saying, ‘fuck ’em, let ’em swim or sink on their own’ are motivated by the years and years and years we’ve had GOP free-market cultists merrily slicing away the social safety net while preaching a religion of rugged individualism where we all sink or swim on our own *coughSocializedMedicinecough*
If a rationale can be found for giving a safety net to Wall Street, then I want mine goddamit. Enough of the class warfare the wealthy have been waging on the poor and middle-class for the last 30 years.
Joshua Norton
If only for picking the stupidest name out there. They were trying to be hip and “with it”, but ended sounding like a kids summer camp.
Or a lunch special at a Chinese restaurant.
Dennis - SGMM
It’s interesting that all of these
bailoutsbridge loans don’t seem to have any strings attached. No requirements to keep a certain amount of assets on hand in some proportion to liabilities, nothing. In other words; keep on doing what you’re doing boys – the fundamentals are strong.JGabriel
Ok, the New York Times has a full article up now, rather than just a blog update.
The link is: here.
.
Martin
On Friday AIG only needed $20-25B, but they got hammered so badly yesterday and today that now they need $85B. So we just pissed $60B away. Oh well.
JGabriel
r€nato:
coughSocializedMedicinecough
You know, it’s pretty damn ironic when our government is afraid to “socialize health care”, but feels free – on the whim of the Fed – to socialize the fucking insurance companies instead.
.
Walker
You are assuming that they can make the money to pay this back. If everything about AIG is remotely correct, this bridge loan is not going to help. They will still go under, and the tax payers will have pissed away $85B.
ThymeZone
Another $60b or two, and you are talking about real money.
Walker
In reference to my previous post, I see this from the NYT:
These valued assets consist of all their bad CDOs. So you might as well say that they are collateralized by magic ponies. They are going under and that money is never coming back.
r€nato
yeah, thank god we don’t have some faceless government bureaucrat deciding what health care we get…
oh… right…
Brian J
Wouldn’t someone buy out some parts, if not all, of AIG? I read that some sectors of the company are profitable, so if that’s the case, wouldn’t the taxpayers get something back?
Jake
We could buy a lot of Special Olympics, particularly in Alaska, where the fine Governor Palin decided they were too expensive.
You can’t make this stuff up. She’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Rick Taylor
Just be glad liberals aren’t in power; always spending your money on useless things like health insurance and such, and always want to regulate the market to death.
Incertus
Forgive my mother-fucking student loans? Seriously–I’d be willing to put in some national service time teaching in an at-risk high school for four years to get that monkey off my back.
JGabriel
Jaysus, what a useless bargain. If AIG can’t repay the loan, the ownership warrants are likely to be worthless anyway.
If this is an accurate description, it sounds like the Fed just bought all the risks of owning AIG without getting any of the benefits.
.
r€nato
I am not an expert on AIG, but I do understand that they both owned a nice (un)healthy chunk of Big Shitpile, and they insured it too.
So they are fucked both coming and going. How are they going to survive that when other companies which were only fucked one way went under?
I understand they do have other lines of business which are profitable, but seeing as there is still plenty of pain left to come in the mortgage meltdown, I have a feeling this is not just a short to mid term liquidity crisis. So long as people can’t or won’t pay their shitty mortgages, the people who invested in securities backed by them will keep losing money and the people who insured those securities will be on the hook.
Dennis - SGMM
There’s always a silver lining; former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan, who was kicked out in June, 2008, received a payout worth $68 million.
The Dangerman
Which reminds me of one of my current pet peeves; given marketing is all about brand awareness and benefits, is there a single sufferer of ED in this world that hasn’t seen a Cialis or Viagra commercial. I’m so tired of arguing about Sex Ed in Schools and then hearing repetitive 30 second commercials for fucking.
wasabi gasp
85 billion is a whole lotta desk earn’n.
JL
I just spent the evening sorting through different health plans and the one that I can afford depends on me not getting sick.
.
JGabriel
New York Times (as quoted by Walker):
So this is basically a bankruptcy, with the Fed providing funds so AIG can unwind its assets at full value instead of firesale prices.
Sounds dubious, but I guess all other options were worse.
.
Keith
Manchester United thanks the US government for bailing out their shirt sponsors. They still have half of the £56 million deal outstanding.
Badtux
Well, AIG actually does have some insurance subsidiaries that are profitable and have real assets. Selling those off will raise some cash to repay the loan. I presume that the rump company then left over will have all those bad CDO’s and will be allowed to quietly collapse and go out of business at that time.
As for my earlier comment about printing the money, sorry, I don’t have any references to that. But if the Fed loaned out this money, they printed it, one way or another, because the only money the Fed has actually on their books is the reserves on deposit with them from the national banks. If you loan out that money, you are effectively lowering the reserve requirement and printing money (see: fractional reserve banking, multiplier effect, and effects thereof if you lower the reserve requirement). In other words, I jumped to a conclusion based upon the fact that the only way the Fed can give a loan of this magnitude is either from their reserves (i.e. they just printed a buncha money) or by just printing it directly (well, “print” for some definition of print — adding some 1’s and 0’s to a computerized ledger is the high-tech equivalent of ye olde printing press). That’s the only money they have, in the end — money they print via one of those two mechanisms (loaning out reserves or adding 1’s and 0’s to a ledger).
Unfortunately we have pretty much exhausted the possibility of a “good” solution. Now we are talking about bad solutions, or even worse situations. Deflationary spirals curdle the blood of financiers and are to be avoided if at all possible because they are complete and utter national disaster, and unfortunately, with most of the national banks teetering on the edge of insolvency, the chances of a deflationary spiral are all too plain to see. Does that push folks like the Fed to engage in perhaps hasty actions? Yes. But it’s as if you saw a child holding the trigger to an atomic bomb that would vaporize the city, and you had the cross-hairs of a sniper rifle’s scope centered on her forehead. Would you pull the trigger? Well, you might wish there was better solutions, but if you’re staring at a situation that could vaporize the financial system, the answer is yes, you would pull that trigger…
– Badtux the Monetary Penguin
r€nato
$85 billion = two wet suits and a dildo for over 265,000 closeted Republicans.
Tsulagi
Gee, if we’re nice maybe Iraq would buy that new Fed debt loaning us the money from their surplus. Put Palin on it. After seeing the U.N. next week she’ll be an expert.
The byproducts of success just keep on dropping.
zuzu's petals
Or Shamu’s little brother.
Jake
I can’t imagine it’s a heckofa lot of fun to be a Wall St. investment banker these days.
r€nato
correction: two wetsuits and a dildo for over 265 million Republicans
JL
Badtux the Monetary Penguin
Can you explain why they were dealing in credit swaps?
lampwick
Collectivized agriculture by Thursday. Count on it.
Y’all see this?
“Black Comic Introduces McCain”
http://www.observer.com/2008/style/black-comic-introduces-mccain
Hilarious!
r€nato
Palin’s been to a bank before. That means she knows how to solve the financial crisis!
Glenn
McGovern had it right back in 1972 when he was asked about the nature of Nixon’s economic plan. ” Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” Were seeing it writ large now. If your big enough you no longer have to worry about risk. As for the rest of us we’re just a bunch of petty losers, or as Phil Graham like too call us all Whiners! It’s the golden rule folks! Those with the gold make the rules.
Badtux
Why AIG was dealing in credit swaps? Can I explain? No. You need to ask a psychiatrist, not an economist, for the answer to that question :-).
– Badtux the Not-crazy Penguin
r€nato
What Happened To AIG
not-that-long story short: the rest of their business was healthy but the CDS’s did them in because they were very deep into them.
Why were they dealing in them? Same reason people took out toxic mortgages to pay overinflated home prices and lenders were willing to give them the money for it, I suppose: everyone else was doing it.
Lie baby, lie!
With all the bailouts that have taken place since last spring, it should be perfectly clear that we don’t live in a capitalist society. We actually live in a socialist corporate welfare state, at least for the biggest boys. Better to call it no risk capitalism.
I had naively hoped we would make it through the Bush years without him breaking every freaking thing.
dadanarchist
You’ve got it exactly right. I understand why these banks have to saved, intellectually, but it is also a bit of schaudenfreude about the whole fucking situation.
Especially since none of the assholes who caused this mess will ever feel any of the pain, or see any jail time.
JackieBinAZ
$85 billion = 23 pairs of Ferragamo loafers for every man, woman and child in Alaska.
NYT
AIG is the world’s largest insurer so the U.S. government is now the pricemaker for the insurance market.
Fannie and Freddie ARE the mortgage market and are now controlled explicitly by the U.S. governement.
Soon the U.S. Automobile industry will likely be government controlled also.
Congratulations President Bush, sprinting to a finish.
Conservatively Liberal
My wife and I have banked at WaMu since they took over our old bank (Pacific First Federal) in the late 80’s. We have been pulling our CD’s out as they have been maturing and slowly moving everything over to a local credit union. We have just under $20,000.00 left at WaMu (all FDIC insured) but we are thinking of leaving the rest there and riding the failure out.
I figure that if we are going to have to pay to bail them out,we might as well make sure that our cut goes to paying ourselves back. One other point is that we have never been part of a bank failure and we might as well get that notch in our belt so we have some great stories to tell the grandkids.
;)
dadanarchist
It makes you want to pull out that joke from a few years back – I don’t remember know whose it was – that joked that Bush was a Soviet sleeper agent sent to destroy the US.
An out of control, busted war in Afghanistan. An unending occupation in Iraq. Russia, under the control of former KGB agents, on the upswing. And now the de facto socialization of large sectors of the American financial system.
wasabi gasp
You could buy every person in the world a “I survived George W. Bush and all I got was this stinkin’ t-shirt” t-shirt.
Montysano
I heard some bobblehead on CNBC say that it’s quite common that the parent company dies, but the subsidiaries continue. Is that true? I have no fucking idea. Our company’s owner and I were talking today; he said he asked his banker to explain credit swaps, esp. since every month we write a check for rent and a check to pay a swap. The banker was unable to explain it.
Because they could? Because swaps were hugely profitable?
This blows me away: the global value of financial derivatives (a swap is a type of derivative) is estimated at $500T-$800T. Global real estate is valued at about $100T; global GDP is about $50T. What kind of shape would all of us be in if we were leveraged at 10x-15x of our annual income? This is huge, and I’m afraid we’re just getting started.
Brian J
Why would you do that?
Chuck Butcher
Renato,
I couldn’t agree more as a left wing class warrior, but my friends and past employees (none now) cannot weather the outfall from an AIG failure and most Americans can’t. I’m serious in my belief that with just a little work we could have another Great Depression and the privilege of naming it after GWB just isn’t worth it. I’m now and as a US Rep candidate an advocate of single payer health care, of the worker, of the people in general and an avowed opponent of the plutocratic agenda – including the propagation of illegal hiring for the purpose of repressing the worker.
That last doesn’t win me a lot of friends in liberal circles, and I can give a rat’s ass because the facts back me and I give a damn about feel good rhetoric.
AIG has profitable businesses outside insurance and its insurance goes so deep and wide that its failure is unacceptable. I’d love to hang the bastards, start where? Phil Gramm, GWB, Bill Clinton for signing? That gets us no money and nowhere. We could dig up St Ronnie and…
Single payer would cost less overall than what we have, everybody knows it, but the insurers aren’t going to let go of that cash cow and the investment banks that hold those insurer dollars ain’t gonna either.
With Bush at 30% you’d think, but nooooo….
Nylund
The Fed either made this deal, or we enter the next great depression. we should all be very happy this deal happened.
And they’re charging LIBOR + 8.5% (~11% I think). If AIG actually pays it back, the Fed could make some real money.
And, as noted above, the Fed basically printed the money (take that somewhat figuratively), which is inflationary, but with asset prices falling (And I believe the latest announcement had CPI falling), we are actually at risk for deflation, so a little extra printed money isn’t all that bad for us right now.
I hate to see a “bailout” just as much as the next guy and I have HUGE concerns for the moral hazard implications of this, but AIG didn’t get a good deal by any means, and given the choice of this or a complete financial meltdown, any central banker would be forced to do the same.
I know everyone wants these wall st. jerks to get their comeuppance, but inflicting us all with possibly another great depression in the process is not the way to go.
Its normal to feel angry, but remember to mix in a sigh of relief with that as well.
BH-Buck
Apologies if someone else has touched upon this, but where exactly did that $85 billion come from? Thin air, perhaps?
Dennis - SGMM
Under any rational legal system what’s gone down would be described as fraud. The perpetrators would be stripped of their assets to pay partial restitution and they would be jailed. Fortunately, we have an unregulated financial system run by unaccountable executives who will be handsomely rewarded for running the economy into the ground.
Nylund
Hey, the US now owns AIG.
If only Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Kaiser, Aetna would go bankrupt, maybe we could sneak national healthcare in through the back door via the Fed.
BH-Buck
Whoops, spoke too soon! Still, not good.
Davis X. Machina
Collectivized agriculture by Thursday. Count on it.
All Power to the Soviets of Preachers and Brokers!
Calouste
In the category shark jumping with a triple somersault :
Which ffffing dictionary do these people use?
Tsulagi
Isn’t he? Just when you might think that fucker is done he shows he still has the magic.
Notorious P.A.T.
LOL
What’s funnier than an a**hole going on record to say that it’s alright to use force to grab someone else’s riches. . . than having his own riches grabbed away by force.
sparky
from what i’ve seen so far, this deal looks more like another freddie-fannie conservatorship. AIG will be wound down in an orderly fashion. or at least not in a bankruptcy court. imagine if the IBs actually had to explain how they fashioned those swaps.
the ideological question i have is with this latest (last?) collapse of the “intellectual” underpinnings of the Great Conservative Project, will it go the way of the pro-slavery movement? Or are we gonna be stuck with holdovers for a long long time (think Jim Crow but for the oligarchy).
yeah yeah i know 1929-1936 is more appropriate but given the level of pure ideological crazy out there these days it looks a lot more like 1858 and Buchanan in the WH. but Hoover works for me, too.
Ecks
Buddy I’ve lived in Canada and I’ve lived in America, and the universal health is waaaaaay the hell better.
And for the low info knee jerks out there, under universal health care you still chose your own doctor, and you decide how to treat yourself with that doctor. The only difference is that the bill gets sent to your local provincial capital instead of to an insurance company, and they pay the doctors (who are essentially still entrepreneurs) a set list of prices for procedures. That’s the Canadian system – other countries have better ones, and the Canadian one is STILL better than the US. Way more freedom than any crappy HMO ever gave me here.
BH-Buck
Calouste, I don’t think it’s as much an elitist issue as it is a racist issue.
Try getting her to admit to that though.
Conservatively Liberal
A self-described fiscal conservative who works in finance unloads on McCain with his first diary at Kos, which is on the rec list. It is an excellent smackdown of James Taranto
tryinglying to absolve McCain of voting for the repeal of Glass-Steagall. This nicely ties the banking mess around McCain’s neck, and the same for the Republican party. The only Senate Democrat to vote for the repeal was Ernest Hollings (SC).He also ties Phil Gramm, godfather of the financial mess, to McCain. I hope Obama and Biden pick up on this and run with it.
Dennis - SGMM
It figures that someone who married money and who has a spokeshole would be against Obama. Which country first, Mrs. de Rothschild?
Notorious P.A.T.
I want a faceless *corporate* bureaucrat deciding what health care I get! One who gets paid more money by denying me procedures!
Why do people do anything? Because they can.
dadanarchist
Lady, your fucking husband’s name is Evelyn.
That’s all the needs to be said.
Calouste
That would be Lady de Rothschild, to use the correct title.
That’s not elitist or anything.
JGabriel
Nylund:
And Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
In other words, the US now owns the mortgage industry, and the company that insures most of it.
How will that play out over time?
.
Kevin
All hail our
fascistRepublican overlords.stickler
4thelulz:
Let’s nip that fantasy right now. In 1929, we HAD a gold standard. Didn’t help much. Rather the opposite, in fact.
Though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick up a bit of gold now, in 2008. The Fed is going to be printing money like it’s going out of style, and that means inflation. Big Time.
GSD
All your base points are belong to us.
-The Red Chinese
Kevin
Kevin Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
WTF?
Martin
The free market is efficient and responsible, bitches!
b-psycho
Other things 85 billion dollars could buy:
-50 million 52 inch HD TVs
-Enough bottles of Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout for every human being on the face of the earth to have at least one.
-A PS3 & a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 for over 184,000,000 people.
-According to an auto quotes search on Yahoo, a Bentley Azure for every citizen of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
-The following companies: Nike, Russell Corporation (parent co. of Spaulding), & every NFL team.
zuzu's petals
Lady Lynn in 2007:
Marshall
LIBOR just doubled overnight, so that would be 15% now. At any other time, that would be front page news.
Not to me.
Brick Oven Bill
John Cole;
With respect, you don’t understand the true cost of the deal. The true cost is the 80% of AIG that the government now ‘owns’. Meaning that we have to make good the claims. This deal could equal the cost of the Iraq War. We will all pay for it through higher inflation.
Obama is resisting the commission because Raines in on his economic team.
zuzu's petals
So here is Lady Lynn on Fox News earlier this summer:
Evidently she’s been organzing the disaffected Hillary people for some time now, so I guess none of this surprises anybody.
Could somebody please explain to me her reasoning (that I hear a lot from HRC supporters) that Hillary actually “won the popular vote” and the whole dismissal of the caucus votes.
I don’t think the first is factually correct, and if the caucuses were so questionable, why did Hillary put so much of her time, effort, and money into the Iowa caucus?
zuzu's petals
Oops, link here:
Fox News
PanAmerican
AIG subsidiary ILFC is the worlds largest airliner lessor.
A Blackberry in every pocket and an Air Fuck One in every driveway.
THAT my friends, is change we can believe in.
Innocent Bystander
Hello Comrades and welcome to the People’s Republic of the United States!
Pretty funny, all these years I have read RW talking points referring to Democrats as socialists and communists…but it turns out the Republican Party has socialized our banking and insurance sectors. Maybe autos, soon. Well, socializing the risk part of it, anyway. Gotta love that Republican free market philosophy!
What a legacy George W. Bush is going to leave us with. Unmitigated disaster with regards to foreign policy….now, as he goes out the door, he bookends this with being an unmitigated disaster on domestic policy.
And 50% of the people still want 4 more years of this?
LiberalTarian
I dunno. Fuck ’em.
They told Argentina that if they didn’t cover their debt they were all going to fry.
Argentina said, “Fuck you, and your fryers too.”
And interestingly enough, folks in Argentina are just fine.
Let the rich assholes swing, twist in the breeze. Take their damn houses, their bank accounts, their jets, their yachts, take every damn penny they have and let them live on social security, food stamps and medicare.
Let them eat fucking cake.
r€nato
Karma was trying to tell this asshole something, but I have a feeling he was not listening.
Chuck Butcher, you don’t have to sell me on why it would be extremely foolish to allow AIG to fold. I’m just explaining where the sentiment comes from, that people get upset about these corporate bailouts.
This is the consequence of GOP preaching social darwinism, when push comes to shove the big capitalists want the government to give them a helping hand just like the average Joe does. I just wish average Joe could see through the GOP bullshit and quit voting for them. “Rugged individualism is for the proles!!!”
james
This was to stave off disaster. I don’t think anyone has ever seen failure on this level before and honestly, I don’t think the Feds even know what they’re doing. Kinda just pluggin’ holes at this point really, hoping the dam won’t bust.
My question is, how is this legal? The Fannie and Freddie bailouts… along with, Chrysler I think, back in the seventies… took an act of congress, correct? This took a phone call?
Maybe it’ll hit the floor tomorrow, maybe not, but it’s a pretty gutsy move to just start tossing around cash like this. The bailout better work, or someone may be going to jail.
Ecks
Nah, my understanding is that those 80% are shares. It’s a corporation, so the liability is strictly limited – the worst case scenario for that 80% is that it stops being worth anything.
The bigger problem is that we’re all involved in these financial markets, only indirectly. The companies we work from and buy our food and computers and wireless service from… all of them borrow money for various reasons, and the money they borrow is the cash slopping around in that fast financial system. And that’s assuming you don’t even have your retirement fund in stocks and bonds (incidentally, wouldn’t it be a really good idea to completely privatize social security so that ALL our retirement savings would go through the stock market – because, you know, HISTORICALLY it gives a pretty good rate of return, right… Oh those righties, always looking out for our best interests, bless their little* hearts).
* And I do mean LITTLE.
Ecks
“IF” only indirectly. I totaly meant “IF ONLY INDIRECTLY”. Stupid late night writing.
Levantine
srv
You could give a Honda hybrid to nearly every college graduate this year.
Snark Based Reality
The end of this Sinfest comic delivers.
zuzu's petals
More on Sarah’s “executive experience”:
NR
New viral project – spread this quote around:
“…the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.” New York Times, 9/15/2008
Obviously, spread it around online, but I think those of us who live in red or swing states can do more. Paste it into a word processor, blow it up to a big font, then print out a bunch of copies and leave them around for people to find. Don’t litter – do stuff like tape them to light posts, put them up on public bulletin boards, leave them behind when you leave a restaurant, etc.
Don’t put any commentary on the sheets, nothing pro-Obama that might get people’s political defenses up. This isn’t political, it’s informational. Let the quote speak for itself.
Let’s try to reach as many people as we can with this.
zuzu's petals
Maureen Dowd lands another one:
zuzu's petals
Unbelievably, Goldberg repeats his lie about McCain not being able to use a computer because of his war injuries…here, in the LA Times:
Pantsload unloads in LA Times
The comments section should be open for another day at least. I think people should blitz the place.
Joshua Norton
Did anyone mention that McCain invented the Blackberry?
Damn, Karma is a bitch, and Gore is getting his payback in spades. Hey wingnutz, how does it feeeeel?
Joshua Norton
Troglodytes his age don’t use a computer because they can’t type. Back in their day only women touched a keyboard and they consider it an insult to their manhood.
Let’s all just decide here an now that everything that comes out of rightie’s mouths is a lie and take it from there. No need to reason with them, just call them out on it.
Conservatively Liberal
Carly Fiorina gets tossed under the bus, but only under one set of wheels. She will still be fundraising for McCain.
JGabriel
Zuzu’s Petals:
Crikey. McCain’s too infirm to use a computer?
What else do his disabilities prevent him from doing that we should know about?
I mean, I’d feel real bad about putting someone who finds it too painful to even use a computer in charge of the country. It just seems like it would be awful stressful for someone who’s already not in the best of health, doncha think? Maybe I shouldn’t vote for McCain, but that other guy instead. The younger one, Obama what’s his face. He seems to be in much better health.
(Does Goldberg even pause for a moment to think about how people will respond if they take his bullshit seriously? If Goldberg’s excuse for McCain’s computer illiteracy were even remotely true, then that would be just one more reason why McCain is unfit for office.)
.
dbrown
We are all AIG owners now … what the fuck? We now control trillions in leverage debt and hold the fucking bag? If this is holy butt fucker regans dream, then we get the nightmare and the fucking CEO;s have the gold. This is a ripeoff. If we the tax payer clean up the mess, then regulation and higher tax’s on capitol gains are the price. Bush whacked again and McInsane wants to be McBush. We are fucked.
Scrutinizer
Maureen Dowd is unimportant, and we do not hear her words.
Xenos
YOW! You know how many commercial leases are adjustable annually by a margin over LIBOR? Get ready for a whole lot of Chapter 11s to shake off that burden. Permanently high LIBOR could put a lot of fiscally conservative local banks in trouble – we will see in a year or so.
liberal
Calouste quoted,
Hmm…someone needs to be stripped of her membership.
The Grand Panjandrum
I thought being “tossed under the bus” had been disappeared by John Cole.
Josh
$85 Billion = One solid-gold set of the Ten Commandments for every courthouse in the nation.
mak
So we’ve nationalized/socialized the mortgage business and now the underewriting business. If we can do that, re-nationalizing healthcare and energy should be a breeze.
Conservatively Liberal
Yes, and it survived. ;)
w vincentz
Since I’ve been harvesting turnips and potatoes lately, the $85 billion will buy enough for people to survive on.
Also, factor in the large appliance cardboard boxes that they’ll be living in and there’s no problemo, none.
Lot’s to eat and a place to live.
Good times!
charlotte
For anyone who has seen Wall-E, we’re headed for a bridge to Buy N’ Large. Book your passage now on the good ship Axiom.