Explaining the Bailout

Jim- banks make money by making loans. they get the loan back plus interest (profit). businesses make money by getting loans. they use the money to buy or make stuff which they then "mark up" to pay off the loan and make a profit too. This is what makes our merry capitalist carousel go round.

2. On a bank's books a loan is treated like an asset. It's out there, but the bank is going to get paid back plus. In addition, where home-loans are concerned, the loan (mortgage) is backed up by the value of the house. So the more loans a bank has on its books the "richer" it is.

3. But what happens when the loan goes or is bad? In that case, the "asset" turns into a liability and the bank is poorer. Oh well... they can always foreclose on the house, resell it and get their money back. But what happens when the price of the house was a bubble-price anyway and it turns out that the resale value of the house was way under the amount of the loan. Oh shit....

4. Banks can only lend money in proportion to their assets. (12:1 currently I think). Because the whole system is an intricate game of musical chairs or of robbing peter to pay paul, banks can lend out more than they actually have on the calculation that not everything comes due at once and they can always spin around fast enough. But when we reach the "Oh shit" point, banks can't lend because they're aint going to be enough in-flow to cover the outflow. This is what is called "insufficient reserves".

5. Now it's a little more complicated than that because a lot of these loans were repackaged and resold to 3rd, 4th, 5th buyers down the line. The whole thing is the financial equivalent of melamine in the baby's milk.

6. The "bailout" is very simply a program of "cash for trash" Our cash to buy up all these "toxic" (i.e. no good) loans. The idea is that if we give the banks good dollars for lousy mortagages, they will then turn around and make loans again. Of course, we'll be stuck with the trash, but the merry go round will at least start to spin.

7. But nothing in the bill requires them to make loans. Nothing stops these swine from taking the money and buying US or German treasuries, or investing in a Nigerian gold mine. It's basically just a giveaway

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Vote No On Bailout

To:--Members of Congress

Re:--Bailout

Congress has no right to give the White House and its Secretary of the Treasury the power to transfer the people's money to the richest bankers in the country. Vote No to the Bailout legislation. The Bailout legislation is being rammed through Congress in a matter of days.

This is an illegal power grab by the White House and their richest friends on Wall Street. The Legislation allows the Treasury Department to appoint the same bankers who created the crisis to administer and dictate the use of trillions of our tax dollars. It is also one of the biggest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in the history of the United States.

Instead of being whores and pimps to BANKSTERS (FDR's term) you should:

1) help families stay in their homes. Wealthy executives should be forced to disgorge their obscene profits, fees and bonuses that made them ultra-rich while they ran the economy into the ground.

2) provide universal health CARE (not health "insurance") to all Americans and force these obscenly fat dollar hogs to pay into the kitty

3) REPEAL the so-called "bankruptcy reform" act that keeps hard working people in perpetual debt slavery AFTER they have lost their homes...

4) provide free universal merit based college education so that young adults do not have to start off life as debt slaves in hock for 50, 70, 100,000 dollars.

START WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY INSTEAD KISSING ASS TO BUSH-PAULSON BANKING SCUM

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Dribbling Shit & Dripping Blood

To:--Members of Congress

Re:--Legislative Achievments - 2008

Let’s see here....

$75 billion to prop up insurance giant AIG, but not one penny for universal health care?

$100 billion to prop up Fannie & Freddie but not a dime of effective relief for struggling homeowners?

$200 billion several times over for death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan but not a dollar for free merit-based higher education so our young men and women can begin life uncrushed by hopeless debt?

And now...

$700 billion to bail out gambling fat cats and fraudsters but not not a red cent of bankruptcy relief for families forced onto the streets or bankrupted by illness?

The English language does not have words harsh and vile enough to describe how repulsive and loathsome the whole damn lot of you are.

Your mouths dribble shit and your hands drip with blood.

You are beyond disgusting, but God does arise to trample out the vintage.

Your own children will sit in the rubble you have prepared for them and curse your name.

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