The rescue bill

[DrRay11]

Nancy Pelosi is dumb.

There, ripped a Dem.

[Tahoe]

^ Thats an easy one, but I'll take what I can get.

re:rescue bill

I'm glad the money was stripped from ACORN at the very least.

[Wilfredo Ledezma]

that's a statement of fact though...

[MoTown]

^ LOL I knew that was coming. And I've ripped JM and have no problem ripping him some more.

Now if we can just get y'all to rip a Dem.

btw... I was going to post that statement he makes that "I will make them famous" I know he said when he's prez, he'll do that but no time like the present as far as I'm concerned.

I think everyone on this board has ripped both Clintons at some point.

[Big Swami]

I think the country is united in the belief that it would have been better for Bill to fade into a respectable retirement.

[Wilfredo Ledezma]

that'd be too hard for him to do with Hillary though...

i don't mind the clintons anymore, they've become a snake with no venom

i think i said before on here, gun to my head, and i knew a democrat had to be president, i'd have wanted Hillary rather than BO...

but...

[Tahoe]

Wow, this bill looks to be 'more of the same' spending by the Gov't.

I thought (dreaming) that they could pass a fairly clean bill. One that bought up these so-called toxic assets. Kept tight control of the money, etc. Not so.

And every day they don't pass it, it costs taxpayers another 75-100 billion.

[Uncle Mxy]

You used the word "clean" and "bill" in the same sentence.

You know you're on the Politics board, right?

[Tahoe]

Would you mind if I revised/fiksed your last sentence to ...

"You know you're talking about Washington DC, right?

[xanadu]

Some day historians will look back at this bill as the fundamental example of our decayed political system. Not only does the money go directly to the individuals who fucked up in the first place, the govt. had to dump a truckload of money into useless crap. The only thing worse than the bill iteslf is the bipartisan back-slapping afterwards. Only the shitheads in congress could stand in front of the world and proclaim the heroism of their coming together to pass this crap. 'I just want to say that it wouldn't have been possible to pass this piece of shit without the remarkable ability of my colleagues to work with me on a bill nobody wanted during election season.' The daily show did a good parody of that last night. I understand that credit markets were tightening up, but this bill is the equivalent of slicing a deep cut even further before placing a small bandaid on it.

When I lived in new york, I knew people that worked in the financial business. Their key to making money had little to do with promoting new business. Instead, they made money off of volatility. It is not an accident that markets have been so volatile during the bush years. The money making vehicle of volatility works in three steps:
1. Take an asset and throw a bunch of money into.
2. See the asset's price go up and wait for others to push it up even higher.
3. Pull your money back out of the asset before others do.

This process revolves around the notion that you are the smartest person in the room and requires lots of capital to throw around. However, the income earned has no association with the production of good and services. It is basically playing high stakes chicken. Eventually, the whole market went south and everyone lost money. However, they did not lose their own money, they lost money borrowed at low interest rates.

Thus, it is not surprising that the market tanked after this bill passed. There is no fundamental strength in our economy. It is a sham. You can see this in the inport-export exchange. We stopped producing much of value years ago. In the interim, we have been living on credit, buying and selling goods to each other that have been produced elsewhere. Like I said, this is a huge pyramid scheme. The only reason we won't bottom out completely is that America itself is too big to fail. We will be bailed out to some extent by the Arabs and the far east Asians. However, the value of the dollar will tank for a while, and we will experience what it is like to be a poor nation seeking hand outs. We just won't have to go to the IMF. However, all is not lost. We'll probably deal with unemployment rates in the 12-15% range at the worst of times, but we still have technological advantages over many countries and relative poverty should actually improve our innovation as we (hopefully) abandon get rich quick schemes. So we're on the downslope of our power and influence, but we won't turn into sub-saharran africa. i suspect the quality of life will decline for most of western society as trade deficits begin to realign. Anyways, this is my opinion. It is hard to say what will happen because we've never faced this type of crisis before.