Wow. Dow drops 777.68. Largest point drop ever.

So I looked up Nancy Pelosi's speech to see if Republicans blew it out of proportion. They didn't. Did she want the vote to fail?

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Republicans in the US House of Representatives blamed Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi for the failed bail-out vote, claiming she made a partisan speech near the end of a debate on the rescue plan. Below are quotes from the speech:

"[W]hen was the last time someone asked you for $700bn? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration's failed economic policies ? policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system."

"Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos."

"Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street. The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardise the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilisation bill."

"Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership ? We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future."

For anyone who cares - Albio Sires voted FOR the bailout:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll674.xml

Wow... House does NOT pass the bailout bill. 207-226... (at least right now...).

Dow fell almost 700pts after than, now only down about 450, but either way, pretty stunning they brought this to a vote without having the necessary votes...Somebody needs to learn how to count.

I'm not in finance. I'm just a taxpayer.

I read that my 2008 tax returns won't be affected, but my 2009 tax refund WILL BE affected.

I only took one economics class in college and all, but, I'm not so much a fan of that. Can a Wall Street guy 'splain it for me?

I make 40k/year. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT *ME* in 2009? (I mean that as a collective lower-middle class ME.)

WTF

Under the radar and without much media coverage, Detroit is asking and getting a minimum billion dollar BAILOUT too.

Our dumb-ass motor manufacturers who build stupid cars want a hand-out to re-tool their plants.

+1 to the Japanese for understanding the market, environmental concerns and our hip pocket for fuel efficient cars.

Another private industry that has private profits but demands social losses by the taxpayer...what a joke. These corporate executives in the finance and motoring industries must be laughing their ass off how they NEVER lose, but maintain their quality of life, while the rest of use pay for their fccuk-ups.

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.

- Let's nationalize financial institutions
- Subsidize the Auto Industry and financials in drag, like GE, GMAC
- Own the airlines

Hey what about Exxon and company, why don't we take over the ones that actually make a profit, rather than ones we have to bail? WTF? It doesn't make any sense.

I know, I know, I don't understand how complex it is....no need to tell me how stupid I am

I have mixed feelings about the bailout...there are strong reasons for it and against it. I do believe those who were asleep at the wheel and those on wall street need to be taught a tough lesson and their should be some penalization for them....its not enough that they have lost so much money...something proactive to punish them should be done.

Also, the average consumer did play a part in this mess...hopefully they will learn that is its better to work hard and save and buy wisely rather then always trying to make a quick buck or take fantasy loans/mortgages...thats one thing i have not heard any one comment on...in most cases no one put a gun to their heads in signing on the bottom line.

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Actually Lehman went down because they were the largest underwriter of mortgage backed securities in 2007 and were either unable to sell the lower tranches or held onto them too long (many people blame the ceo for this).

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This is a joke right? Hedge funds work together to destroy banks?

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LolL, what if you sell the credit default swap and buy the stock? No short seller can stand up to that buying pressure, that way you make money, shareholders makes money and the short sellers go out of business!

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I agree that outlawing shorts is the pinnacle of free market denial. It's like saying at the roulette table you can only bet on black but not red. Failure of regulation is such a GOP trademark, now to pass new regulation because you've failed to enforce what you have is like criminalizing driving because you've failed to enforce the speed limits.

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+1 Brewster, I might disagree with people about things on here, but there's no need to get nasty about it. Let reason prevail.

Naked short selling = bad, however Short-selling in general is not a bad thing. It helps to find market-clearing levels for stocks and keeps things from getting overvalued. The latest regulation making it illegal to SHORT any financial stock is absolutely ridiculous and I oppose that. Naked shorting (as far as i know) has always been illegal, it just hasn't been enforced very well. Whoever said the reason things have been going down is due to lack of buyers, not because of short sellers.

Wachovia, which will probably get bought this weekend by Citibank, was down 40% today before word got out of a possible deal. You are certainly not allowed to short Wachovia, but it still went down. They have one of the worsts balance sheets out there and Citi's ain't much better. That's why they went down, not because of the dastardly short sellers! As a friend of mine pointed out recently: Those two companies are like two drunks trying to hold each other up!

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short selling doesnt, but naked short selling does. It is what killed lehman and brought many companies to their kneels. It is financial terrorism when done in such a coordinated manner by the hedge funds.

Buy credit default swap and naked short the stock. No company can stand up to those kind of selling pressure. Morgan stanley went from $30 to $10 at one point.

We seriously need Palin in there to help with the negotiations - I understand that her hairdresser does her own books and talks about them with her, when she gets a haircut.

What's amazing to me is that there are really only about a handful of people that really know the intricate details of what is really happening. None of which are the conmen (congressmen). Watching them for the past 2 days was like watching them being educated in an economics 101 class. I am not claiming to know exactly what is going on either, but this is a true circus. From everything like banning short selling, etc. What's their excuse now that there are no shorts? What no one seems to to get is that short selling does not bring the market down, it's the LACK OF BUYERS that brings the markets down. This is a very serious problem and unfortunately, we have clowns in the highest decision-making positions.

well it doesnt matter now. sunday 6pm is the line in the sand.

No but funny enough I got this as spam today:

From: Henry Paulson, h.paulson@USTreasury.gov
Subject: PROPOSAL.
To:
Date: Friday, September 26, 2008, 8:15 AM

Dear Friend,

I am introducing my self as Secretary Henry Paulson, the Secretary of US Treasury, I wish to request for your assistance in a
financial transaction., And I wish to invest in Finance and mortgages in your country.

I have 700 Billion USD($700,000,000,000) to invest in your country, and I will require
your assistance in helping me stand as my President's business
partner who he deposited the consignment on his behalf into the
security, the consignment was
deposited in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was latter lifted to Washington Mutual Bank where the consignment is now under the care of the security company
diplomat.I will be gladly to give you 15% of the total sum for
your assistance.

Please it is very important you contact me immediately on my private email
address:h.paulson@USTreasury.gov

For further explanation on the whole entire work plan.

Awaiting your immediate response

Thanks and God bless.
Hank Paulson

You guys involved? (as a side note, does anyone know how to get "indentation" to work on this website?)


Bailout Protesters Offer Billions in Bad `Assets' to Government


By Matthew Leising

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- For sale: one fraying cloth mop.The price: $150 billion. ``But I'll take $100 billion,'' said the seller, Myk Freedman.

The Brooklyn, New York, resident was one of hundreds of people who demonstrated by Wall Street's charging-bull sculpture yesterday in protest of the government's $700 billion proposal to prop up the nation's financial system.

Competing crowds of anti-Bush, anti-war and poverty advocates vied for space in the financial district. While the crowd chanted, Freedman placed a wooden tennis racket at the feet of the Wall Street symbol.

``Two hundred billion'' for the racket, he said. ``That's because I have tennis elbow.''

The protest was publicized in part by a Web site with an unprintable address that popped up in recent days. On it, taxpayers can offer the government their version of subprime collateralized-debt obligations.

About 2,650 people have listed mostly useless items that they would like the government to buy, including: a broken Nintendo video game console for $150,000; a dismembered stuffed frog for $47,000; and what one contributor called the Hilton Hotels Corp.'s ``most expensive'' liability -- heiress Paris Hilton, for $10 billion. Such ``assets'' totaled $697 billion and climbing as of today.

The site, which was created Sept. 21, was the brainchild of Washington-based Web designer Kyle Stoneman and friends. So far, it has been viewed more than 500,000 times, Stoneman said.

``After we saw the buyout plan, we wanted every American to be able to cash in their bad assets at an over-inflated price,'' he said in an interview.


`Fraud Stearns'


Stoneman likened his site to the satirical TV program ``The Daily Show'' in that it's important to know the context of the jokes that are being made.

``It's an interesting thing to use satire to make a point,'' he said. Satire or no, he said, the message is resonating. ``It's something a lot of people agree with and it's hitting home with a lot of folks.''

The people standing around the bronze bull agreed. A bag of VHS videotapes was offered, including the last episode of ``Sex and the City'' and the Brad Pitt movie ``Legends of the Fall.''

``Brad Pitt is at least worth $10 million,'' said the tape's owner Brian, who declined to give his last name. A friend of his brought a teddy bear with ``Fraud Stearns'' written on it. The price? $7 billion.

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Well, at least we can agree on that...

Buffet's purchase of Goldman was a great investment because he bought a solid asset on the cheap, but that's more or less Buffet's way of doing business: buy up solid investments when everyone else is selling and the price is low. Goldman Sachs was in one of the strongest positions financially even as this economic crisis worsens, and even though profits were down, they were still profitable. All and all, it says little of the state of the economy that Buffet is making the purchase; he was simply taking advantage of the down market as he has often done.

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versus:

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How can I argue with that?

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I don't fully understand what the deal is, I doubt there are many people that do and I have a background in Economics and Finance.

In the same spirit it would be difficult to argue the points you are making because I believe your understanding of the "bailout" is completely off. These toxic assets are diced up mortgages which would be almost impossible to trace back to physical property.

This is one of the reasons Sovereign Wealth Funds and PE firms are not touching it.

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Wall Street Journal 9.25.08

Mr. Buffett's decision to invest now in Goldman gives an indication of how the famed investor believes the financial crisis might shake out. At a minimum, he regards Goldman as a survivor, although the firm's profits could be pinched as it adjusts to life as a banking holding company, taking fewer risks and facing heightened regulation.

In a telephone interview Wednesday morning from his office in Omaha, Mr. Buffett said he believes the proposed federal bailout will be approved by Congress and that it will succeed. "The government has a great opportunity," he says. "If they buy things at market prices with the government's cheap funding, they should make a lot of money."

If Congress fails to approve the bailout, Mr. Buffett says, all bets are off. His investment in Goldman will "get killed, and so will all our other investments."

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I would disagree with you here. Sovereign Wealth Funds have poured money into our economy & the Chinese and others have been stockpiling US debt for quite some time - i.e. funding the US government's spending binge over the last several years. So i'm not sure how you figure they need to "step up" and solve OUR problem. That's simply nonsense. And if you want a glimpse of how their investments in this country have panned out so far this year, take a look: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/21/business/21sovfactbox.php

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Hmm, well, he bought a $5bn preferred stock deal and got fantastic terms on it: 10% interest rate per year and deal is callable at a 15% premium over what he paid for it at any time. He ALSO got warrants to buy another $5bn of common stock at $115/share (stock was trading at $125ish at the time). That's a sweetheart deal but has very little to do with the bailout. The Oracle will do just fine on this one... Don't you worry about that!

The fact remains, you had nothing to say about the merits of the deal, the fact that these bonds are backed by loans and if borrowers default on them you own their house, that many of the loans will pay off and/or continue paying over time. The fact that at 50c on the dollar (or lower) very few of them have to pay off for the government to get most of their money back.

I give up.

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SWF? Single white females? Sitting on billions? Step up to MY plate baby! If you got the money honey, I got the time.

Neo-Liberalism is a fairly known term.

Most conservatives are liberals in the economic sense...well at least they were a week ago.

Very few people are calling on the government to do "nothing" but I highly doubt you will see anything close to a sensible resolution to this crisis in such a short time frame..much less on JC List.

A large part of the problem is the lack of trust most Americans have in those running our government and economy (as well as the institutions).

Someone else mentioned it on here. These Private Equity Funds and SWF are sitting on billions of capital and they need to step up to the plate. They stand to gain the most if the "bailout" goes through so they are on the sidelines right now. In fact Buffet only put 5 billion into Goldman based on the assumption the bailout would go through. It wasn't a sign of confidence in the fundamentals of the financial system it was a bet that the bailout would pass.

Guess even the oracle could be wrong this time.

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I agree, skepticism is called for. But skepticism without any sort of intellectual curiousity is what bothers me about this debate. People say "that won't work, that's a stupid idea" but have no idea why they believe that, or the reasons why they believe that are based upon incorrect assumptions about the problem.

And what is a "neo-liberal"? Is that a liberal who watches "The Matrix" on a regular basis? Newsflash my friend, most of the people on wall street who packaged & bought subprime and Alt-A mortgages are conservative republicans... Most of the Bankers you guys claim will benefit from the bail out are right-leaning individuals...

My point was arguments for or against something should be based on FACTS and or reasoned opinions - like the article i posted. While i disagree with the writers conclusions, i respect the fact that he put forward a reason to be against this bail out, which i have yet to hear from anyone here.

Doing nothing - is that a plan? What was that lyric from Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!"

"Here's my issue with you guys, if you want to make arguments against the bailout do it in a reasonable/analytical way. So far what i've seen is people arguing against something they don't fully understand..."

The average person has no grasp on the details of any of this , just a healthy and proper skepticism. In fact almost every expert (admittedly) does not fully understand this extremely complex and complicated debacle the neo-liberals have gotten us into.

How can you blame the average American for being Skeptical of the bailout when they have been told time and again by Bush, Bernanke and Paulson that the fundamentals of the economy and financial system are sound. Then a few weeks later ask for a trillion dollar check with no conditions and new sweeping powers for the Treasury Secretary?

Hank Paulson Quotes from today's WSJ

February 27th 2008

"I don't think...the American taxpayer needs to be stepping in with more taxpayer dollars..we are so far away from seeing something that would have me calling for a bailout that I don't see it"

July 20 2008

"It's a safe banking system. A sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation"

Sept 18th 2008

"If the (700 billion) bail out doesn't pass then heaven help us"

Here's my issue with you guys, if you want to make arguments against the bailout do it in a reasonable/analytical way. So far what i've seen is people arguing against something they don't fully understand... While I might disagree with what I'm about to post, at least the guy MAKES SENSE... Enjoy:


Why Mark-to-Paulson Accounting Won't Save Banks: Jonathan Weil

Commentary by Jonathan Weil

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- There's one glaring weakness in Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's plan to save the U.S. financial system: We know what the plan is. Any other problems with it are mere details.

Much like the credo of Brad Pitt's character in the 1999 movie ``Fight Club,'' the first rule of market manipulation is you don't talk about market manipulation.

Give Paulson a $700 billion check without asking any questions, and the former Goldman Sachs boss might have a shot at kick-starting the credit markets using some mysterious, black- box, trading sorcery. Because the money isn't his, though, he has to give us at least a vague outline of what he's up to. Now, even if Congress approves some form of his proposal, it's far less likely to work because we're all in on the deal.

The plan goes like this: Treasury will pay financial institutions above-market prices for garbage assets nobody else wants. Then, through the magic of mark-to-Paulson accounting, everybody else that owns similar stuff will use those same prices, or marks, to value the trash on their own balance sheets.

Shazam! Banks and insurance companies write up the asset values on their books. They post big profits. Their capital goes up. Everyone gets fooled. And nobody knows the difference.

Except, we do. And that's why the plan probably won't work.

Still, give Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke credit for ingenuity. At the same time banks are begging regulators to suspend mark-to-market accounting rules so they can avoid disclosing more losses, Paulson and Bernanke instead devise a way to abuse the same rules for the same banks' benefit.

Put It in Reverse

Under Paulson's plan, Treasury would hold so-called reverse auctions for financial institutions' troubled assets. Whoever submits the lowest bid gets to sell its junky assets to Treasury for cash.

While that might look like a competitive, free-market mechanism, it's not. Once the first bid in the first auction is submitted, it may not go much lower, and it probably will be much higher than the true market value.

That's because the real incentive for the banks isn't to sell their rubbish to Treasury and get cash. It's to watch the Treasury pay grossly inflated prices to others. That way, they can use those transactions for accounting purposes to mark their books to the Treasury's farcical market prices.

This presents another problem. The transaction prices coming out of these auctions may not meet the accepted definition of fair value. Under the Financial Accounting Standards Board's definition, fair value is the price ``in an orderly transaction between market participants.''

Stretched Rules

A know-nothing buyer that sets up a rigged market to overpay for dreck wouldn't seem to count as a ``market participant,'' under the FASB's definition of the term. To qualify, a buyer must be ``knowledgeable, having a reasonable understanding about the asset or liability and the transaction based on all available information.''

It would be a stretch to say the Treasury knows or understands anything about the swill it would be buying. Even if regulators waived the accounting rules to permit this, investors would see it as government-sponsored fraud and lose any confidence they still had about banks' balance sheets.

So, the main hope for Paulson's plan is that Treasury makes enough outrageously expensive purchases to spur real market participants to start buying the toxic waste from each other again, even if only in hopes of flipping it for more money to the spendthrift Treasury.

Pain Avoidance

In that case, the prices paid outside the auction process probably would qualify as ``fair value.'' Then, over time, maybe the prices in Treasury's auctions would come down as competition increased.

If the prices drop too much, though, banks will wind up taking huge losses and failing anyway, which is what Paulson and Bernanke are supposedly trying to avoid. All the while, the Treasury would be spending as much as $700 billion getting us right back where we started. And a lot of Wall Street charlatans who should lose their shirts would expand their fortunes, which is politically and morally untenable.

Whatever the government proposes probably won't work as intended. It also could make things worse. This seems to have dawned on a lot of people in Congress this week while they watched Bernanke and Paulson testify. Even if Congress fails to act, that wouldn't mean Paulson's plan was a disaster. In one respect, the details of his plan don't matter.

By making it known on the afternoon of Sept. 18 that he had a bailout proposal, at precisely the moment when the financial system seemed to be tipping over the edge, Paulson bought the markets the most valuable commodity of all -- time.

Years from now, when we look back on the past week's events, we may conclude this was his real goal all along.

(Jonathan Weil is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jonathan Weil in New York at jweil6@bloomberg.net

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Because it's toxic, and I don't believe the value will go back up after the bubble has burst.

If it's really worth something, why aren't Sovereign Wealth Funds and private capital rushing to buy ths "good" stuff?

Experts say it's a crisis of confidence - that says it all.

I guess time is the final arbiter, so we shall see.

why do you people keep insisting the govt is giving money to the rich with this bailout when it's explained to you over and over to be not the case. I have this image of a brat kid holding his ears and just screaming "free money to the evil bankers".

If you goto best buy and pay $50 for a $200 air conditioner because it's winter and noone wants it. ARE YOU GIVING FREE MONEY TO BEST BUY?!

the mind boggles...