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Obama was viewed as being stronger on the economy and McCain stronger on national security and foriegn affairs. Since the economy recently has been the main focuse of Americans which favored Obama will the bailout cause more Americans to start viewing the economy as less of an issue than it was before the bailout and now start thinking more about national security and foriegn affairs which favor McCain?
Last edited by Motion; 10-02-2008 at 01:51 PM..
Reason: Title change
Obama was viewed as being stronger on the economy and McCain stronger on national security and foriegn affairs. Since the economy recently has been the main focuse of Americans which favored Obama will the bailout cause more Americans to start viewing the economy as less of an issue than it was before the bailout and now start thinking more about national security and foriegn affairs which favor McCain?
The bailout won't make people forget that they're jobless, can't afford to feed their family, obtain healthcare or buy gas to look for work that may or may not exist. The economy comprises more than just the bailout, just as national security includes more than 'the surge worked!'.
The bailout helps McCain, yes. Not a lot, but it does. The question is, does it hurt Obama, and the answer is no, because the people that are voting for Obama don't understand the big bad world of finance, anyway. They're Democrats! It's not in their nature to understand things like MATH. They just think what Dear Leader tells them to think.
The bailout won't make people forget that they're jobless, can't afford to feed their family, obtain healthcare or buy gas to look for work that may or may not exist. The economy comprises more than just the bailout, just as national security includes more than 'the surge worked!'.
I've been under the impression that many Americans don't view Obama as being any more knowledgable about the economy as McCain or else Obama's lead in the polls would be larger. McCain seems to be hurt more by Bush's mismanagement of the economy more than his lack of economic expertise.
The bailout helps McCain, yes. Not a lot, but it does. The question is, does it hurt Obama, and the answer is no, because the people that are voting for Obama don't understand the big bad world of finance, anyway. They're Democrats! It's not in their nature to understand things like MATH. They just think what Dear Leader tells them to think.
The bailout helps McCain, yes. Not a lot, but it does. The question is, does it hurt Obama, and the answer is no, because the people that are voting for Obama don't understand the big bad world of finance, anyway. They're Democrats! It's not in their nature to understand things like MATH. They just think what Dear Leader tells them to think.
It would hurt Obama if people really knew and understood WHY Bush, et al, have had to ask American taxpayers to foot the bill.
Fannie and Freddie are heavily implicated in the mortgage meltdown/credit crisis/bailout fleecing of American taxpayers.
The companies, which together own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation’s total, have lost $14 billion in the last year and are likely to pile up billions more in losses until the housing market begins to recover.
Fannie and Freddie both purchase home loans from banks and then repackage those loans as mortgage-backed securities which they either hold on their own books or sell to investors around the globe.
Government takes control of Fannie, Freddie - Mortgage Mess - MSNBC.com (broken link)
---That last sentence is why American taxpayers are going to have to pay foreign investors/governments for the bad debt/mortgage-backed securities Fannie/Freddie sold them.---
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been in contact in recent weeks with foreign governments that hold billions of dollars of Fannie and Freddie debt to reassure them that the United States recognizes the importance of the two companies.
Armando Falcon, who clashed frequently with the companies during his six years as Fannie and Freddie's chief government regulator, said in an interview last month that the companies' woes are similar to the downfall of other major corporate titans like Enron and WorldCom earlier this decade. "It boils down to a whole lot of greed and arrogance," he said.
The companies, he said, took advantage of the perception on Wall Street that the government would stand behind them in a time of crisis, as is now the case.
With that implied government backing, the companies generated large profits for years, but ultimately took on too much risk, causing investors to lose faith in their ability to navigate the historic housing bust.
Even as the subprime mortgage market collapsed, Fannie and Freddie kept backing risky so-called Alt-A loans, which were made to borrowers with solid credit but little proof of their incomes, or small or no down payments. Mortgage giants were blind to bubble - Mortgage Mess - MSNBC.com
Hagel, Sununu, Dole, McCain (all R's) tried to rein in Fannie/Freddie. The Democrats repeatedly blocked those attempts.
The Greatest “Bait and Switch” of ALL TIME
I recently spent some time with a senior executive in the structured product marketing group (Collateralized Debt Obligations, Collateralized Loan Obligations, Etc.) of one of the largest brokerage firms in the world. I was in Roses, Spain attending a wedding for a good friend of mine who thought it would be an appropriate time to put the two of us together (given our shared interests in the structured credit markets). This individual proceeded to tell me how and why the Subprime Mezzanine CDO business existed. Subprime Mezzanine CDOs are 10-20X levered vehicles that contain only the BBB and BBB- tranches of Subprime debt. He told me that the “real money” (US insurance companies, pension funds, etc) accounts had stopped purchasing mezzanine tranches of US Subprime debt in late 2003 and that they needed a mechanism that could enable them to “mark up” these loans, package them opaquely, and EXPORT THE NEWLY PACKAGED RISK TO UNWITTING BUYERS IN ASIA AND CENTRAL EUROPE!!!! He told me with a straight face that these CDOs were the only way to get rid of the riskiest tranches of Subprime debt. Interestingly enough, these buyers (mainland Chinese Banks, the Chinese Government, Taiwanese banks, Korean banks, German banks, French banks, UK banks) possess the “excess” pools of liquidity around the globe. These pools are basically derived from two sources: 1) massive trade surpluses with the US in USD, 2) petrodollar recyclers. These two pools of excess capital are US dollar denominated and have had a virtually insatiable demand for US dollar denominated debt…until now. They have had orders on the various desks of Wall St. to buy any US debt rated “AAA” by the rating agencies in the US. How do BBB and BBB-tranches become AAA? Through the alchemy of Mezzanine-CDOs. With the help of the ratings agencies the Mezzanine CDO managers collect a series of BBB and BBB- tranches and repackage them with a cascading cash waterfall so that the top tiers are paid out first on all the tranches – thus allowing them to be rated AAA. Well, when you lever ONLY mezzanine tranches of Subprime RMBS 10-20X, POOF…you magically have 80% of the structure rated “AAA” by the ratings agencies, despite the underlying collateral being a collection of BBB and BBB- rated assets… This will go down as one of the biggest financial illusions the world has EVER seen. These institutions have these investments marked at PAR or 100 cents on the dollar for the most part. Now that the underlying collateral has begun to be downgraded, it is only a matter of time (weeks, days, or maybe just hours) before the ratings agencies (or what is left of them) downgrade the actual tranches of these various CDO structures. When they are downgraded, these foreign buyers will most likely have to sell them due to the fact that they are only permitted to own “super-senior” risk in the US. I predict that these tranches of mezzanine CDOs will fetch bids of around 10 cents on the dollar. The ensuing HORROR SHOW will be worth the price of admission and some popcorn.
The American taxpayer is the buyer, and foreign investors/governments are highly unliklely to want to sell the CDO's back to us for 10 cents on the dollar.
"A significant number of synthetic CDO deals reference Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to S&P. A total of 1,531 U.S. and European deals making up 2,104 rated tranches have exposure to these entities." S&P Expects GSE Announcement to Have Limited Impact on Synthetic CDOs
Doesn't he constantly praise himself for not supporting any earmarks? Looks like he just supported $100 billion in earmarks.
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