Hello

what I miss

not much

Hey Dala (and others), what are your thoughts on this, from TMQ who's a pretty bright dude:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...erbrook/080930

As Congress continues to debate whether they are going to hand over $700 billion of your money to the wealthy who screwed up Wall Street and the banking industry, you will be relieved to learn that top executives of the bailed-out firms temporarily will be limited to a strict $500,000 a year in tax-subsidized income. Surely you receive $500,000 a year in tax-subsidized income, don't you? Anyway, supposing we assume the bailout is required, here is what bothers me about the plan so far: Taxpayers don't get stock, what they get is warrants that can be exchanged for stock, and nonvoting stock to boot. This means that once media attention switches to the next crisis that everyone will claim in retrospect to have seen coming, the Wall Street rich can quietly lobby to have the warrants never called, thus keeping the entire bag of gold for themselves. Even if the warrants are called, taxpayers get no voting positions -- meaning the boards of directors of the bailed-out firms can do anything they damn please with taxpayers' money.

A week ago, Warren Buffett rescued Goldman Sachs by injecting $5 billion in capital. Did Buffett bargain for warrants that can be exchanged at an unknown later date for nonvoting shares? No: He is not a fool. Buffett gave Goldman Sachs $5 billion in return for senior preferred stock, the kind that votes and also is more valuable than ordinary shares. That is to say, he used his money to buy something. Goldman can now employ the cash to fix its liquidity problems. The United States Congress and the White House should use the public's $700 billion to buy something, namely senior preferred shares. Why are Congress and George W. Bush not simply following the road map laid out on this problem by the smartest investor of our era? Either Congress and the president are a bunch of blithering fools -- or what they actually want is to insure the public's money is never seen by the public again.

http://www.myspace.com/themuggs

any relation?

HaHa. I don't think so.

Those Muggs are much more talented.

um...stink? draw flies?

i'm just glad i got my fixed rate. 5.5%, i'm happy.

bounces

really....

ok, thanks. had never heard that saying before.

First of all, Warren Buffett didnt "rescue" Goldman Sachs. TMQ loses a lot of credibility off of the top with that distortion of the truth. Buffett was given a sweetheart deal and Goldman definitely needed the capital but if anyone thinks that they couldnt have gotten it in another manner is simply not informed (snipe you can ask you know who and he will tell you the same thing).

This "bailout" needed to be done fairly quickly. Rumors of this bailout are the only thing that keeps the markets from going over the side of a cliff. There is no time to cater to make everyone happy.

Congress has bought an extra couple of days by acting as if this is definitely going to get done. Look at what happened when it failed? People keep talking about the 777 points on the dow monday but no one is looking at Libor and the cost of short term commercial paper. This is extremely precarious. When those rates and spreads start to get out of whack the system can completely lock up and if that happens... Lets just say they need to act fast.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day.

If everyone is so worried they should write their representative:

https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

Whoops, so much for that. :rolleyes:

Buffett is looking out for himself, and Geedubb n' Paulson are looking out for their business friends that screwed it up with their greed n' irresponsible loaning of money. We need someone to negotiate on the taxpayers behalf, because these 2 are def. not looking out for the best possible deal for the country's taxpayers.

I actually agree with 2 that are normally the hatfields/mccoy's on this.... Trump and Wynn.

If a mortgage institution needs a loan (not a bailout) from the gov't to be liquid, then they should have that right, if they did everything legally..... if and only if, every cent that they make while the loan is out there goes back to the gov't to pay off their debt (with agreed upon interest). If they change their lending practices to only give out viable loans and pay back the loan, then they will become a viable company again.... if not, then they go under.

I think that's a ton better solution than the gov't buying up all the bad paper, which ends up with a bunch of beurocrats/lawyers that have no idea how to run a mortgage/banking company in charge of it.

Trump and Wynn made peace years ago. Trump was in the process of building a condo across the street from wynn las vegas and wynn actually went to Trump's last wedding.

Trump and Wynn are interesting role models...especially Wynn.

Wynn's the reason Trump doesn't have a gaming license in Vegas (bought the Frontier's right out from under him.... since he's got more pull on the Vegas council). Trump wanted to buy that license since the property's right next door to his condos (would have built an extra condo on the Frontier's site that had the casino), but Wynn stopped him.
I actually got to see and get a good pic of Wynn, as I was right next to him since I happened to be in Vegas the night that he opened Wynn Las Vegas and he was going around the crowd meeting people and glad-handing everyone. Stayed there last year and that place is phenominal (sent me a deal in the mail that made me pay $99 to stay and gave me $150 gambling free)... and I've travelled all over the US, Canada and even been to Japan on business trips. Rooms there are the best I've been in... and I've been in some really, really nice places, including the level 6 secluded Marriott in Hawaii.

Old news. They buried the hatchet years ago and were actually going to build a casino together. For the record, Trump
HAS a gaming license in Las Vegas.

http://www.popularq.net/articles/Liv...k-casino-deal/

Wynn lv is nice if not garish. He should have stopped at Bellagio.

that would be interesting.... haven't been to Atl City in ages, but liked the Taj when it was built. Trump in Vegas would be interesting and go to Vegas once/year (hoping with the economy being down, that the deals right after Thanksgiving are equal/better than prior years, if so, should get my 4 nights comped.... and I'm NOT playing big $$ out there, $150/day max and that includes food).

Wynn is tough on the comps. Interestingly enough, Wynn's sportsbook director is a big race guy that has written op ed pieces for the DRF. John Avello. They will comp based on play on horses but they want some pretty serious handle for a room. Nice race/sportsbook but really small.

If you havent been to AC, try Borgata. Not great but better than anything else in AC. First one in AC that actually gets the whole Vegas thing.

OK, Fu, so explain this to me. I'm probably playing Devil's Advocate but my question is why the hell should I care?

I own a house, can easily pay my mortgage, am happy with my life, basically I'm the person that worked my limited assets and my credit right and never got so rich I'm getting ****ed over now. My job is secure.

So how the hell is this my problem? Some rich people with money in the stock exchange will lose money. Those same rich people that don't want to take a small tax increase to help people like me out. Why should I bail them out? What is my doomsday scenario?

A real doomsday scenario? Imagine a world without credit. A completely cash world. Checks? No. All cash....for everything. Imagine what that would do to our economy. Imagine what that would do to the quality of American life. How safe of a world would that be?

If people can't see this as a real possiblity then i dont know what to tell you. If people can't imagine what that would do to our lives...