AGI Bailout And The Dog That Didn't Bark

[Bill Call]

One question that is rarely ask about bailouts is:

Who exactly is getting bailed out? Who gets the money? Whose investments are being guaranteed?

Our major media and congressional leaders seem uninterested but it is an important question.

When AGI guaranteed a bond or sold an investment insurance product there was a buyer. It is the buyer who is being bailed out. It is the federal government who is providing the money.

Who is getting the money? Is it government pensions? Which ones? Who made the decision to buy? Why should we bailout public employee pensions?

Is it foreign governments? Are we guaranteeing the investments of the Chinese government? What did they offer in return?

Is it very wealthy individuals and billions in private wealth? Why bail them out?

There is an astonishing lack of curiosity. Find the answer to this question and you find the answer to many others. Maybe that's why the question is not being asked.

[ryan costa]

nobody blinked the first time AIG got 120 billion last year. it was kind of under-reported. not reported on enough. Rihana and Chris Brown got more coverage. at least in america.

AIG: a company that literally produced nothing, wracking up enormous liabilities. no union laborers. highly qualified knowledge economy workers on top of the pecking order racing along the bridge to the 21st century.


120 billion dollars of sidebets on the performance of stocks and bonds. De-riv-a-tivs.

I'm guessing the folks with hundred million dollar compensation packages over the last 15 years ultimately pulled the strings to lower top tier income taxes, de-regulation, unregulation, unscrutinization, and ultimately the bailout. "don't stifle innovation."

what was interesting was to see how fast Stephen Moore and other pundits jumped from defending them to blaming the consequences of them on liberals.

[Joe Ott]

There's a bailout coming but it's not for you
It's for all those creeps hiding what they do
There's a bailout coming but it's not for you

Neil Young. Fork In the Road

[ryan costa]

Jon Stewart presents: the dangers of paying attention:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index ... ial-advice

there is a nice segment on AIG in the middle.

While some may point to liberals for failing to reign in "sub-prime" lending or regulations that may have prevented fannie and freddie from capsizing, it is logical to assume that the entities which gained the most from this - for a few years anyways - exerted the most leverage. Those would be the billionaire hedge funds, derivatives traders, etc: all their top guys reaped tens or hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars. for a little while.

[Bill Call]

While some may point to liberals for failing to reign in "sub-prime" lending or regulations that may have prevented fannie and freddie from capsizing, it is logical to assume that the entities which gained the most from this - for a few years anyways - exerted the most leverage. Those would be the billionaire hedge funds, derivatives traders, etc: all their top guys reaped tens or hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars. for a little while.

The housing bubble was a creation of the federal government. The derivative bubble was a creation of MBA bankers and traders. I call it the revenge of the IVY league. We are being governed by the faculty of the IVY league colleges. God help us.

This article from Reuters states that the AIG bailout was really a bailout of European banks and pension funds (and I suspect the Chinese government):

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29542948/print/1 ... mode/1098/

One senator said that organizations insured by AIG not only did not take a loss they "made out like bandits".

I sure miss that edit button.

[Jim DeVito]

So when do we get to let them fail and "see" what happens. ie. some Abu Dhabi wealth fund buying them. And while we are at it I see GM is asking for more money. Is it time to cut the cord? Yes.

[ryan costa]

While some may point to liberals for failing to reign in "sub-prime" lending or regulations that may have prevented fannie and freddie from capsizing, it is logical to assume that the entities which gained the most from this - for a few years anyways - exerted the most leverage. Those would be the billionaire hedge funds, derivatives traders, etc: all their top guys reaped tens or hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars. for a little while.

The housing bubble was a creation of the federal government. The derivative bubble was a creation of MBA bankers and traders. I call it the revenge of the IVY league. We are being governed by the faculty of the IVY league colleges. God help us.

This article from Reuters states that the AIG bailout was really a bailout of European banks and pension funds (and I suspect the Chinese government):

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29542948/print/1 ... mode/1098/

One senator said that organizations insured by AIG not only did not take a loss they "made out like bandits".

I sure miss that edit button.

the european pension fund managers, chinese, japanese, and others have subsidized our experiment with reaganomics and globalism. It was a ten trillion dollar bender over the last 28 years. what is a little hair of the dog?

Ayn Rand collaborator Alan Greenspan marshaled the low-interest imperative. The biggest gainers from this must have exerted the most leverage. I watch the news. at the end of the day the wall street traders are clapping and cheering. when further free trade deals are made they are clapping and cheering at the end of the trading day. when the feds lower interest rates the wall street traders are clapping and cheering at the end of the trading day.

I tried clapping and cheering when I got home from work. the interest on my loans did not go down. I tried selling my car on craigslist and nobody bought it. and I got more unsolicited mail from the banks and mortgage brokers: I was approved and everyone else was doing it.

in the post-industrial globalist paradigm sprawl is the biggest game in town leaving behind an expanding rotting core of decay and dereliction. This far into our most recent oil war how many more cable tv channels do we really need?

[Dustin James]

While some may point to liberals for failing to reign in "sub-prime" lending or regulations that may have prevented fannie and freddie from capsizing, it is logical to assume that the entities which gained the most from this - for a few years anyways - exerted the most leverage. Those would be the billionaire hedge funds, derivatives traders, etc: all their top guys reaped tens or hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars. for a little while.

The housing bubble was a creation of the federal government. The derivative bubble was a creation of MBA bankers and traders. I call it the revenge of the IVY league. We are being governed by the faculty of the IVY league colleges. God help us.

This article from Reuters states that the AIG bailout was really a bailout of European banks and pension funds (and I suspect the Chinese government):

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29542948/print/1 ... mode/1098/

One senator said that organizations insured by AIG not only did not take a loss they "made out like bandits".

I sure miss that edit button.

the european pension fund managers, chinese, japanese, and others have subsidized our experiment with reaganomics and globalism. It was a ten trillion dollar bender over the last 28 years. what is a little hair of the dog?

Ayn Rand collaborator Alan Greenspan marshaled the low-interest imperative. The biggest gainers from this must have exerted the most leverage. I watch the news. at the end of the day the wall street traders are clapping and cheering. when further free trade deals are made they are clapping and cheering at the end of the trading day. when the feds lower interest rates the wall street traders are clapping and cheering at the end of the trading day.

I tried clapping and cheering when I got home from work. the interest on my loans did not go down. I tried selling my car on craigslist and nobody bought it. and I got more unsolicited mail from the banks and mortgage brokers: I was approved and everyone else was doing it.

in the post-industrial globalist paradigm sprawl is the biggest game in town leaving behind an expanding rotting core of decay and dereliction. This far into our most recent oil war how many more cable tv channels do we really need?

So what's your positive idea for a solution?
Today, with what we know of the past (which is gone) and what is on the table going forward (solutions), what realistic approach would move the dialog forward?

Just curious.

.

[Bill Call]

So what's your positive idea for a solution?
Today, with what we know of the past (which is gone) and what is on the table going forward (solutions), what realistic approach would move the dialog forward?

Just curious.

.

Don't bailout AIG. According to this billions went to European banks. How much went to China?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638394500958141.html

The article said that in the absence of an AIG bailout Europeans banks would have had to come up with $300 billion of their own money. So what?

Their needs to be full disclosure of who is getting this money. I have a hunch that if it was the Salvation Army it wouldn't be a secret.

[ryan costa]

So what's your positive idea for a solution?
Today, with what we know of the past (which is gone) and what is on the table going forward (solutions), what realistic approach would move the dialog forward?

Just curious.

.

I would stack the cabinet with decent people.

Secretary of Treasury Ravi Batra.

Secretary of Agriculture Gary Nabhan

Secretary of transportation James Howard Kunstler

Secretary of Education Clifford Stoll

Secretary of Interior Tom McCarthy

I would raise taxes on gasoline to pay for all middle east federal expenditures. this will promote choosing smaller cars at home, and make alternative energy more competitive.

I would lower social security taxes and stop robbing it to partially mask reaganomics deficits.

I would prevent banks from merging into fewer, bigger banks that then make giant waves after figuring out ways to engineer spectacular bubbles for a few years and then imploding.

GM should be broken up like ma bell. I would institute an imediate 20 percent tariff on automobile imports and automobile part imports. Foreign automakers and parts makers can be encouraged to obtain minority (less than 50 percent) stakes in American automobile plants.

I would squeegee away NAFTA and the WTO, as the magnitude and permanency of them violates the powers granted to voters through Congress in the Untied States Constitution.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone I would dissolve NATO and let the European Union and affiliated countries pick up whichever functions of NATO them deem worthwhile.