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Thread: "Breaking News" Obama Considers Tax on Cabinet

  1. #31
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Htowner @ Feb 16 2009, 10:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    You have got to be kidding about Obama failing . He has not even been in the office a month and he is already being judged ? Or shall I say pre-judged.[/b]
    It seems to me that the individuals who have have been so quick to judge the Obama Administration as a failure after just 4 weeks in office are (for the most part) the same ones who believed that GW had 8 successful years.

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gnadfly @ Feb 16 2009, 09:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    BL, give me some specifics about about Gramm&#39;s contribution. Last I remember Gramm put forward a bill calling for a balanced budget Gramm-Rudman-Hollins and financed a soft core porno
    ![/size][/b]




    Big Louie , you might have to read it to him and then tell him what it means......they have trouble understanding anything other than what Rush or Sean tells them. The guy has a picture wanting our President to fail for God&#39;s sake! Do you really expect him to actully dig and find out where all this trouble came from? "Last I remember........" Jesus Gnad, you only remember that because you only listen to one slanted side, expand your reading sources.



    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...reclosure-phil

    Gramm&#39;s long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt&#39;s requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec&#39;s workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt&#39;s memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

    But Gramm&#39;s most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill&#39;s history.

    It&#39;s not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act&#39;s inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."


    Subprime 1-2-3
    Don&#39;t understand credit default swaps? Don&#39;t worry—neither does Congress. Herewith, a step-by-step outline of the subprime risk betting game. —Casey Miner

    Subprime borrower: Has a few overdue credit card bills; goes to a storefront lender owned by major bank; takes out a $100,000 home-equity loan at 11 percent interest

    Lending bank: Assuming housing prices will only go up, and that investors will want to buy mortgage loan packages, makes as many subprime loans as it can

    Investment bank: Packages subprime mortgages into bundles called collateralized debt obligations, or cdos, then sells those cdos to eager investors. Goes to insurer to get protection for those investors, thus passing the default risk to the insurer through a "credit default swap."

    Insurer: Thinking that default risk is low, agrees to cover more money than it can pay out, in exchange for a premium

    Rating agency: On basis of original quality of loans and insurance policy they are "wrapped" in, issues a rating signaling certain slices of the cdo are low risk (aaa), medium risk (bbb), or high risk (ccc)

    Investor: Borrows more money from investment bank to load up on cdo slices; makes money from interest payments made to the "pool" of loans. No one loses—as long as no one tries to cash in on the insurance.

    It didn&#39;t quite work out that way. For starters, the legislation contained a provision—lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm—that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed. (For Gramm, Enron was a family affair. Eight years earlier, his wife, Wendy Gramm, as cftc chairwoman, had pushed through a rule excluding Enron&#39;s energy futures contracts from government oversight. Wendy later joined the Houston-based company&#39;s board, and in the following years her Enron salary and stock income brought between $915,000 and $1.8 million into the Gramm household.)

    But the Enron loophole was small potatoes compared to the devastation that unregulated swaps would unleash. Credit default swaps are essentially insurance policies covering the losses on securities in the event of a default. Financial institutions buy them to protect themselves if an investment they hold goes south. It&#39;s like bookies trading bets, with banks and hedge funds gambling on whether an investment (say, a pile of subprime mortgages bundled into a security) will succeed or fail. Because of the swap-related provisions of Gramm&#39;s bill—which were supported by Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury secretary Larry Summers—a $62 trillion market (nearly four times the size of the entire US stock market) remained utterly unregulated, meaning no one made sure the banks and hedge funds had the assets to cover the losses they guaranteed.

    In essence, Wall Street&#39;s biggest players (which, thanks to Gramm&#39;s earlier banking deregulation efforts, now incorporated everything from your checking account to your pension fund) ran a secret casino. "Tens of trillions of dollars of transactions were done in the dark," says University of San Diego law professor Frank Partnoy, an expert on financial markets and derivatives. "No one had a picture of where the risks were flowing." Betting on the risk of any given transaction became more important—and more lucrative—than the transactions themselves, Partnoy notes: "So there was more betting on the riskiest subprime mortgages than there were actual mortgages." Banks and hedge funds, notes Michael Greenberger, who directed the cftc&#39;s division of trading and markets in the late 1990s, "were betting the subprimes would pay off and they would not need the capital to support their bets."

    These unregulated swaps have been at "the heart of the subprime meltdown," says Greenberger. "I happen to think Gramm did not know what he was doing. I don&#39;t think a member in Congress had read the 262-page bill or had thought of the cataclysm it would cause." In 1998, Greenberger&#39;s division at the cftc proposed applying regulations to the burgeoning derivatives market. But, he says, "all hell broke loose. The lobbyists for major commercial banks and investment banks and hedge funds went wild. They all wanted to be trading without the government looking over their shoulder."

    Now, belatedly, the feds are swooping in—but not to regulate the industry, only to bail it out, as they did in engineering the March takeover of investment banking giant Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, fearing the firm&#39;s collapse could trigger a dominoes-like crash of the entire credit derivatives market.

    No one in Washington apologizes for anything, so it&#39;s no surprise that Gramm has failed to issue any mea culpa. Post-Enron, says Greenberger, the senator even called him to say, "You&#39;re going around saying this was my fault—and it&#39;s not my fault. I didn&#39;t intend this."

    Whether or not Gramm had bothered to ponder the potential downsides of his commodities legislation, having helped set off an industry free-for-all, he reaped the rewards. In 2003, he left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at ubs, Switzerland&#39;s largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for ubs on banking and mortgage matters. There was a moment of poetic justice when ubs became one of the subprime crisis&#39; top losers, writing down $37 billion as of this spring—an amount equal to its previous four years of profits combined. In a report explaining how it had managed to mess up so grandly, ubs noted that two-thirds of its losses were the fault of collateralized debt obligations—securities backed largely by subprime instruments—and that credit default swaps had been "key to the growth" of its out-of-control cdo business. (Gramm declined to comment for this article.)


    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gnadfly @ Feb 16 2009, 09:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Obama isn&#39;t failing because of Rush. He&#39;s failing on his own. I&#39;m not seeing a lot of financial shows (even non-Fox) on TV giving BHO kudos. Strangely, they are citing the same reasons. Their criticism isn&#39;t limited to BHO, but Reid and Pelosi.

    ?!?![/size][/b]
    He is starting to regulate a industry that has almost brought this country to its knee&#39;s.........and you listen to the financial shows that have been their lap dog for the last ten years????????????? WTF no wonder you think like you do. To bad we did not let Bush invest all our SS into the stock market, you ever think to ask those morons that question? All those people at those shows never saw this coming....and that is who you listen to? Read this to get a better picture of how they are still trying to fuc us.

    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...20034085635.htm

  3. #33
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gnadfly @ Feb 16 2009, 09:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Time to start putting the blame on the current administration.[/b]
    Well it would be helpful if you give them a chance to do something first.

    It is amazing how fast you all moved on from Bush.I can&#39;t blame you . I was embarrassed for 8 years.
    The damages he did in 8 yrs , will not go away for decades. I won&#39;t be around long enough to blame him for all of it but history will be.
    Somebody on CNN called it the worst case of child abuse and grandchild abuse for those who are not even born yet .Lol, can&#39;t argue with that too much.

  4. #34
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Htowner @ Feb 18 2009, 01:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Well it would be helpful if you give them a chance to do something first.

    It is amazing how fast you all moved on from Bush.I can&#39;t blame you . I was embarrassed for 8 years.
    The damages he did in 8 yrs , will not go away for decades. I won&#39;t be around long enough to blame him for all of it but history will be.
    Somebody on CNN called it the worst case of child abuse and grandchild abuse for those who are not even born yet .Lol, can&#39;t argue with that too much.[/b]
    As long as Gnad is critical of President Obama&#39;s decisions the country should be in good shape!

    It is when he starts saying good things about the President that I will begin to worry! Yikes! :unsure:

  5. #35
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    Nah, people are starting to wake up. In Chicago, BHOs backyard.

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=103984

    BTW, I gave him a chance. He issued 5 presidential orders in a week. He appointed way too many arrogant people who hadn&#39;t paid their taxes. He doesn&#39;t corral Pelosi.

    Like I said, blame Barack now. He failed to act effectively. The stimulus package will only delay the depression a year. He&#39;s on the button and we need real action now.

    Finally,

    BOOM!
    Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper - Francis Bacon.

  6. #36
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bigtex @ Feb 18 2009, 06:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    As long as Gnad is critical of President Obama&#39;s decisions the country should be in good shape!

    It is when he starts saying good things about the President that I will begin to worry! Yikes! :unsure:[/b]
    NO shit....Gnad has turned into a welfare baby. Where&#39;s my check, Where&#39;s my check. Guy needs a new shtick.....and so he brings out the Boom Boom Boom. That&#39;s trademarked from the dearly departed. God if only LL and Hap had been around for the last stimulus package and election defeat. I&#39;da been rubbing more noses in shit than a puppy trainer after an Alpo buffet! I bet he&#39;s rolling over right now as we speak. I bet LL is licking his finger waiting to see which way the political wind is blowing before posting again.

    Speaking of last stimulus package where was ole Gnad crying for his check when Bushie boy was in office. Seems he&#39;s showing his true party hack colors.

  7. #37
    Gnad,

    I saw that same report and all I saw was a bunch of rich white guys whining.....

    Wasn&#39;t it the Financial system that invented ARM&#39;s, that went thru the roof and forced people to try to sell their homes because they were not able to meet the mortgage payments, and because there were SO MANY ARM&#39;s they couldn&#39;t sell their home and it was foreclosed on?

    Now they are saying "Let them lose their homes, we&#39;ll buy them up"

    Fuckers,

    Chicago isn&#39;t bitching, it was just some guys who saw their chance to make a quick buck being pushed back for a year or two.

    Not one to preach, but a lot of people made money selling debt to people, and now they are whining that people can&#39;t pay that debt.

    Also we are finding out that all of the brilliant Wall Street Wizards are really just really good Conmen, who will never get the prison time they deserve.

    If we become a socialist state, it&#39;s not the democrat&#39;s fault, it&#39;s Wall Street.
    I&#39;m so drunk I can&#39;t spell my name.

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pornstaro @ Feb 17 2009, 11:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Not take the money? Well now you&#39;re making too much sense![/b]
    I just read where our Gov , Mr Perry is taking the money. Sounds like he is part of the problem.

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ck1942 @ Feb 12 2009, 08:14 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Perhaps they are right now in sticker shock over the proposed bailout plans... which in my humble estimation about the only bailing we will see is capital (not capitol) flight to better tax climes.[/b]
    Capital flight is getting harder and harder to do....


    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world...4632957958.html

    UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, will pay $US780 million ($A1.2 billion) to avoid US prosecution and settle regulatory claims that it helped thousands of wealthy Americans use Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes.

    The Justice Department filed a criminal charge accusing UBS of conspiring to defraud the US by helping 17,000 Americans hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service. The government will drop the charge in 18 months if UBS makes reforms, helps prosecutors, and makes payments under accords with the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.





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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gnadfly @ Feb 19 2009, 09:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    He appointed way too many arrogant people[/b]
    Like Bush never did. The Bush administration was the very definition of arrogance and incompetence. A deadly combination.

  11. #41
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BigLouie @ Feb 20 2009, 07:26 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Like Bush never did. The Bush administration was the very definition of arrogance and incompetence. A deadly combination.[/b]
    How many people did Bush appoint that had big tax problems BigLouie?

    You&#39;re dodging. Deal in the now please. We need a plan and appointees who can work NOW.

    Where&#39;s my CASHABLE check?!?!?


    Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper - Francis Bacon.

  12. #42
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rarely cober @ Feb 20 2009, 09:45 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Gnad,

    I saw that same report and all I saw was a bunch of rich white guys whining.....

    Wasn&#39;t it the Financial system that invented ARM&#39;s, that went thru the roof and forced people to try to sell their homes because they were not able to meet the mortgage payments, and because there were SO MANY ARM&#39;s they couldn&#39;t sell their home and it was foreclosed on?

    Now they are saying "Let them lose their homes, we&#39;ll buy them up"

    Fuckers,

    Chicago isn&#39;t bitching, it was just some guys who saw their chance to make a quick buck being pushed back for a year or two.

    Not one to preach, but a lot of people made money selling debt to people, and now they are whining that people can&#39;t pay that debt.

    Also we are finding out that all of the brilliant Wall Street Wizards are really just really good Conmen, who will never get the prison time they deserve.

    If we become a socialist state, it&#39;s not the democrat&#39;s fault, it&#39;s Wall Street.[/b]
    Thanks Rarely.

    The ARMs I looked at had a 1% or so max annual rise and it was tied to something so that would never reach the max. So the rate would rise but based on something like the prime. I&#39;m not hearing that the ARMs rates reaching the 11% rate I had to pay (along with a lot of other people in 1985). Too many people simply overbought homes bases on optimal circumstances. Too much money was loaned to people who couldn&#39;t pay it back based on the premise that 1) the US govt would insure the loans and 2) real estate prices would continue to rise. In other words, there was "no" risk lending $600K for a house "valued" at $600K because if the guy could pay back the loan the house could be sold quickly for more than $700K.

    Those people on TV are losing money NOW and in the past 3-6 months. They aren&#39;t going to buy a house, even a rental (and I know a lot of people who own a lot of rental property) while the dollar is tight and the house market is falling.

    I have to agree there are conman on Wall Street though. Goldman Sachs, Stanford Group, Merrill, Madoff, etc Not only are there big conmen but the SEC and the CPAs/Auditors who are there to protect us fucked up big time. However, there are a lot of Wall Street guys who aren&#39;t crooks.

    There are a lot of more crooks and conmen in Washington and we are paying them to watch our investments. I&#39;m putting together a thread about the biggest con in US history (thanks HTowner) and it pales in comparison even to the latest stimulus bill.

    If you&#39;ve watch any of the financial shows on CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, etc they have very little to say positive about the stimulus bill. Don&#39;t look now but the DJIA is about to hit in the 6000s.

    One of the biggest unspoken assets of American is the ability to make and enforce a contract. If you cannot buy something and then pay for it and the seller cannot collect his money from the buyer in the marketplace or in court, then we are simply and fundamentally fucked.
    Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper - Francis Bacon.

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gnadfly @ Feb 20 2009, 10:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    If you&#39;ve watch any of the financial shows on CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, etc they have very little to say positive about the stimulus bill. Don&#39;t look now but the DJIA is about to hit in the 6000s.[/b]
    Those are the same guys who profit from bubbles ....they have never told the public that a bubble is a false market. Enron investors never should have had stock at the ridiculously high price that it was in the first place....same with this market. People have lost what turns out to have been a sham. Let the market find its bottom just like they should do with housing. Yes it will be painful but that is what is wrong with this country...it is pain averse. Fuc all the financial shows they are part of the problem. All they want is the government to prop up banks but not auto&#39;s or anything else that might benefit the masses instead of the privileged few. All you are doing is falling for their sham.

  14. #44
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (WTF @ Feb 20 2009, 10:19 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    I just read where our Gov , Mr Perry is taking the money. Sounds like he is part of the problem.[/b]
    Has it passed the legislate? Personally I hope they are smart enough to deny it. I think Bobby Jindal has a clue by not accepting it for LA. I say turn it down and make the Democrats sweat the load for the next 2 years. ;)
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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (AlexisSoftTouch @ Feb 21 2009, 09:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>
    Has it passed the legislate? Personally I hope they are smart enough to deny it. I think Bobby Jindal has a clue by not accepting it for LA. I say turn it down and make the Democrats sweat the load for the next 2 years. ;)[/b]
    I say Perry should give it to Detroit whose in a much worse financial crisis than Texas.



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