News-Record.com

The Bush Administration started us down this path and the Obama Administration is following the same route - how long before it's realized, BY EVERYONE that this is NOT a good idea?

I'm shocked and amazed that there really isn't THAT much outrage from the general public...or, it's just not being reported.

When are the "geniuses" that comprise the congress going to wise up to the hysteria of the "sky is falling" crowd who continue to insist that "we must act immediately to prevent the collapse of Western Civillization. NO you can't read the materials, we need you vote in the next 30 seconds!"

For most of us with I.Q's in double digits that works once. Apparently you really can fool some of the people (the congress) all of the time.

This is nothing more than an attempt by the Administration to swallow up, and control the most important segment of our economy, the financial sector!

Okay, if I'm so crazy, why are the preferred shares of these institutions being converted to common shares!

The relative worth or wisdom of the Federal government exerting influence over the private sector aside for the moment, this is exactly the opposite of what the Fed should be trying to achieve.

If they're going to do something, it should be the breaking up of these merged mega-banks, instead of pushing them together. In the last fifteen years or so, something like 3/4 of the accumulated wealth of this country has been collected under the control of an ever-shrinking group of people, and their business sense seems to have been shrinking as well.

Yet incredibly, Mr. Obama still has "high approval ratings" - as many as 56% rate his as doing an "excellent" job.

What's wrong with this picture?

That was only 1 cent's worth. This forced acquisition took place under the Bush administration...

two cents: Go to Zogby.com, or howobamagotelected.com to find out what's wrong with this picture.

Zogby did a post election poll of Obama voters which showed the abject ignorance of so many of those dolts.

John Zeigler has done a film, Media Malpractice, which shows the incredible corruption, and malpractice of the misnamed, mainstream media throughout the entire 18 month campaign.

MyTwoCents said:
Yet incredibly, Mr. Obama still has "high approval ratings" - as many as 56% rate his as doing an "excellent" job.

What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing! In about 9 months this Nation will be going nuts with Hyper-Inflation. At that point you may be able to have visitors at your local Federal Reserve Dentention Center........

Mr. Harrison - go back and read my FIRST posting to this topic.....and thank you for clearing up any lingering questions about why SOME people appear to still be so enamored by Mr. Obama.

You won't get that, will you?

Actually Mr. Harrison, this whole mess started under the FDR adminsistration with the founding of Fannie Mae, then got worse with the Community Reinvestment Act from the Carter Administration, worse yet when "red lining" was banned during the Clinton Administration, and "affordable" housing pushed by the Clinton and Bush administrations, but at least at some point the Bush people figured out the potential disaster looming over this "affordable" housing hysteria.
There are numerous You Tube videos showing exactly who wanted stiffer regulation on Fannie and Freddie, and who protected these corrupt enterprises, creating a debacle 10 times the size of the Enron mess (for which people went to prison!).

Tony - someone sent me a link to whyobamagotelected.com - and when you actually view the trailer - it's amazing, dumbfounding really - to see just how the media in this country got Obama into the White House. Amazing, dumbfounding - and scary.

Yep, Tony, if people don't vote the way you like they must be stupid. The Zogby poll you cite was notoriously misleading because many of the questions used to show the ignorance of Obama voters didn't even have the correct answer in the multiple choice. Obama got elected because more people agreed with him than did with McCain. It's pretty simple really.

You're right that deregulation in the Clinton administration is partly responsible for this mess. Sadly they undid many of the reforms of FDR. That's what happened when even Democrats believed the shallow economic ideology of the right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1

I suspect you're talking about the statements made by Tina Fey, as Sarah Palin. This proves that many of the Obama voters were led to believe, by the corrupt media (the real point, and the prelude to the film, Media Malpractice), that Palin was a buffoon, but proved instead that it was the Obama voters who were the ignorant buffoons!

How about the really hard question asking which party controlled the congress! I belie 52% answered that one correctly. If you guessed, you had a 50/50 chance!

Well, I don't pay attention for a few hours and the conversation goes way off track!

Rather than affix political blame, how about discussing the actual implications of the feds pushing around a bank like this? This action might have saved Merrill, but it did a helluva lot of harm to Charlotte and North Carolina.

By the way, you might notice that Bernanke's tenure spans the Bush and Obama eras in this story.

Yeah Tony, I was talking about the Fey question. What it proves is that if you heard something Tina Fey said while impersonating Palin and were asked if Palin or Biden said it, answering Palin doesn't mean you were duped by the media. It means you picked the more reasonable of the (incorrect) choices offered. People thought Palin was a buffoon by watching Sarah Palin.

The problem is the voting public in general is sadly ignorant of the political system. Not just Obama or McCain voters. It's easy to pick and choose the idiots out of the crowd. It's the childish response of a sore loser.

The outrage over BoA employees being laid off must be tempered with BoA's acquisition of Countrywide and it's billions in bad loans which BoA assumed. This was a signed deal a few months before the Merrill Lynch deal was struck.

Countrywide had an arterial wound when BoA bought them and there was ample warning time to bail on the deal yet BoA consummated the acquisition.

There is of course no issue on this blog that tonymo won't hijack and turn into a jeremiad against common sense. But okay, enough feeding the trolls.

I agree that this is astounding, and it does explain a few things, doesn't it? However, it's only fair to try not to use 20-20 hindsight and to think back to mid-September. Paulson and Bernanke honestly thought the financial system would collapse, then and there. They thought that BOA's acquisition of Merrill would prevent that. Things were moving at breakneck speed and there was great risk from doing nothing.

Of course we can't go back and see what'd happen if the govt. hadn't forced BOA to go through with the deal, and so we'll never know for sure if Paulson and Bernanke were right. But they probably were right, given what we saw happen to the economy after Lehman was allowed to go under. Until that point, the recession was a mild one. But almost immediately after Lehman's collapse we saw the start of the deep recession-within-a-recession we're still in. From a policy standpoint, it's more reasonable to condemn those guys for letting Lehman fail than for leaning on BOA like this.

Having said that, BOA got a raw deal, and in return the government should have given BOA more favorable TARP terms. If BOA took a hit for the team, it should have gotten some consideration for it.

And yet I'm not saying that I condemn Paulson and Bernanke for letting Lehman fail. They reasoned that you can't bail everyone out, and with that in mind they crossed their fingers and hoped that Lehman's collapse wouldn't cause everything else to cave in. They were wrong. But they were in a difficult position. That's why it's really unfair to pillory those guys without acknowledging the historic decisions they were forced to make with very little time to reflect, do studies, consult blue-ribbon commissions, etc. I realize that a generosity of spirit is uncool in a blog, but sometimes the venomous response isn't the appropriate one.