Replies to post #14575 on Tsafi

[kevin252]

I also agree with Tsafi that America needs to take care of America and quit worrying about the rest of the world so much, but this is the best they could come up with? I've read other peoples' ideas to help us get out of this mess since this whole thing started, and their suggestions made much more sense than this so-called "bailout plan" (now they're trying to make it sound better by calling it a "rescue plan", LOL). All it does is buy them a few months, nothing more. This is part of what Chris Laird said in a recent article of his. It was very interesting:

"Now that Bailout I voted down, bailout II comes up next. Surely some new bailout manifestation will emerge this week and pass. We suspected in our Sunday newsletter Bailout I would fail to pass. But, Congress, shell shocked by fast moving events, will do something.

But it won’t work. Ultimately, even if they came up with a $1 trillion program, all it would do is buy time. I mentioned that there is $1000 trillion of various leveraged markets deleveraging, and putting up 1 trillion against that just won’t work.

I remember a year ago, when the credit crisis started in Aug 07, a banker said ‘the deleveraging will not be denied.’ How true that has proved to be.

Using some basic math, I count total US and ECB temporary lending injections at $3 trillion so far. It’s failing to stop deleveraging. It’s simple math really, $3 trillion thrown against a deleveraging $1000 trillion is not much. The central banks can lend money to banks, even taking bad assets as collateral, but it does not force lenders to lend to one another. They all know that, the truth be told, no one is admitting the extent of the bad paper they hold. So, they won’t lend in interbank lending markets, and Libor rates skyrocket. That effectively negates interest rate cuts by the central banks."

[atotalbum]

WASHINGTON - Here, little piggies!

Congressional deal-brookers yesterday slopped a mess of pork into the $700 billion financial rescue bill passed by the Senate last night - including a tax break for makers of kids' wooden arrows - in a bid to lure reluctant lawmakers into voting for the package

Stuffed into the 451- page bill are more than $1.7 billion worth of targeted tax breaks to be doled out for a sty full of eyebrow-raising purposes over the next decade.

MORE: Di$aster Plan B Wins Senate OK

EDITORIAL: Porking Up The Rescue Bill

"This is how Washington works," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage."

The special provisions include tax breaks for:

* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.

* Puerto Rican and Virgin Is- lands rum producers - $192 million.

* Wool research.

* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.

* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.

* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

Another measure inserted into the bill appears to be a bald-faced bid aimed at winning the support of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who voted against the original version when it went down in flames in the House on Monday.

That provision - a $223 million package of tax benefits for fishermen and others whose livelihoods suffered as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill - has been the subject of fervent lobbying by Alaska's congressional delegation.

Some of the pork-barrel measures buried in the financial rescue package had been contained in a bill that previously passed the Senate, but died in the House.

The Congressional Budget Office said the package of breaks - including obvious pork and some more defensible tax-relief measures - will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the bill doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue hikes to keep the budget balanced.

The legislative lard annoyed Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

"There's always something that goes on at the end where the last dozen members are trying to get something for themselves or for a special interest rather than what might be good for the country," Schatz said.

Some of the other measures added to win approval include a $3.8 billion health-care provision that forces insurance companies to provide coverage for mental-health treatment equivalent to the coverage they provide for physical illness.

Other add-ons will increase individual tax credits and help shield more than 20 million Americans from the painful alternative minimum tax, and offer breaks for businesses that invest in alternative fuels.

Also, several federal income-tax breaks due to expire will now be extended through 2009.