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I know where you're coming from. you're saying that corporate welfare does not exist, but in the eyes of many Americans, they see it a bit differently. I am certain that there are people out here, who think bailing out big corporations is nothing more than welfare, just as big tax breaks are for oil companies, and we little guys feel these types of breaks to corporations aren't fair because we're struggling to make ends meet. Why should the government help the big guy, and ignore it's citizens at the same time. It's my opinion that government has their priorities mixed up. It's also my opinion that the government should be helping it's own citizens here, before rendering help to other countries or nations. They "the US Government" must be clueless as to the needs of the American poor. This didn't just happen yesterday either, it's been going on for quite some time. after my mother became a widow, she received part of my fathers social security death benefit, only a portion of it, and some food stamps, and heating assistance, and still had to cut corners and conserve to make it, month to month. so, nothing has changed in the last 30 years that I am aware of. What we need in this country of ours is a president, and an administration that really honestly cares about our poor people. we haven't had that since JFK was assasinated. I really don't believe we're straying too far off the path here when discussing welfare, because some people view bailouts as nothing more than welfare. Instead of a capitalist society, we should have a socialist society, and start caring and taking care of our own people first. and start sealing our borders and enforce immigration laws that are already on the books, so our welfare system in place now can help the American people first. and, stop bailing out corporations whose CEO's are receiving big bonuses for running the corp. into the ground, and leaving taxpayers and shareholders alike holding the bag. let 'em go belly up. and hold CEO's responsible by prosecuting them. thinking of chile'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bull Winkus
I'm sorry to hear about your disabling condition. I meant no offense. I was only trying to address the misinformation about corporate welfare and no more. Just go back and look at my previous post to the one you replied to. However, perhaps we're being just a little too analytical and straying away from the subject.
Enjoy that open road while you can. Eat a bowl of chile' and savor the flavor of life. The journey is the reward.
Mmmm... that's not corporate welfare. Bear Sterns was taken over and sold to JP Morgan Chase. While the Fed did fund $30B of Bear's less liquid assets (read mortgage assets), that was essentially a loan.
Kinda like all the foreclosures, right. Who say they will ever pay them?
Quote:
Fannie and Freddie are already government sponsored institutions, so it doesn't fit the rough analogy you're trying to create either.
Fannie and Freddie have $223 billion of bonds due by the end of the quarter and their success in rolling over that debt may determine whether they can avoid a federal bailout. Fannie has about $120 billion of debt maturing through Sept. 30, while Freddie has $103 billion, according to figures provided by the government-chartered companies. Bottom line a bail out.
IndyMac and many other banks - Federal Bail-out
How about all the corporations retirement plans that the federal governments is now taking over? What is the cost to the tax payer?
Quote:
If you want to cite an instance of corporate welfare, use the railroads and airlines bailouts.
Highdesertmutz Do you really want a socialist state? Do you believe from each according to his ability and to each according to his need? Income redistribution? Or would you prefer a level playing field and the challenge of
success for yourself?
On another note, you have a concern for the poor and the struggles they have. What is the answer to poverty in your opinion? For me it is education and job training, saving, delaying childbirth, getting goals and priorities established and adhering to a strong work ethic.
You mentioned in response to my post that I would lose my life as I know it if I became disabled or ill. That is absolutely not true because I have been thinking about my responsibility for myself in the golden years all my working life. I have good insurance, long-term care, a pension, lif savings, and social security in place should I need it.
I realize people can make mistakes early on in life from which they sometimes can never recover. Education and example from parents and family and the society is important so the rising generations have good modeling. A hand-up is sometimes necessary but a lifetime of entitlement is not except under unusual circumstances. For example, a person may be struck down too early in life to develop a safety net for himself. With no family help it would truly be an emergency and all help should be extended.
For the healthy and young, the path to security is a long one and I don't think it is a priority for many who seek to enjoy the delights of the retail industry and the lifestyle of the rich and famous from the time they leave the womb.
I mean--come on--I have seen people pay for groceries with food stamps and get a call on their cell phone at the same time. EVery single human in this country is not entitled to a comfortable lifestyle. He is entitled to opportunity, encouragement, incentives, and an education--and help when circumstances convene beyond his control--for a limited period of time in most situations--some exceptions duly noted.
First, not a socialist state, but rather a socialist Republic.
Employ everyone that can work. Forced employment? maybe. you will work for your daily pay. no free ride, unless you are a person with a disability, those would be well cared for on the government's funds. Employ citizens even if the jobs are meaningless or require less skills than someone can attain in the private sector. employ everyone of legal age.
Standardized healthcare for the whole population, at a fair price or standard deduction, but, equal in dollar amount to all, and affordable to all. In other words, you earned 250K last year, and I only earned 35K, your healthcare and mine would be the same, no omitions. But since you made me than I, that wouldn't make any difference, we would pay the same premium for the insurance coverage.
Planned parenthood: government cannot dictate to persons or families how many children they may have, nor, when to have them, like China does. But, if you wish to have children, you'd be assessed the same premium amount that you would pay for yourself per child, and this might discourage you from having 15 children and being on a welfare system. Planned parenthood does not include free condoms at school or birth control / contraceptives just handed out to teens anymore! force parents to take a more vital role in rearing their children! presently, children are handed out these sort of items without parental consent, and without their knowledge, this needs to stop. No more teen pregnancies.
You speak of golden years. most people who may not have the education that you have are out in the work force earning minimum wages. you tell me how a person working a minimum of one job, with utilities, rent, transportation costs to and from work, and buying food is supposed to even be able to afford their golden years when life is a daily struggle just to make ends meet? People who work these types of low pay hourly jobs basically have nothing to look foreward to as far as the golden years are concerned. they are dependent on making it to retirement age, and receiving social security. and, let me tell you, social security does not give a person who made less than 35K a year a lot of benefit, they just barely get by. If you think I'm wrong about this, ask anyone who is on social security, and they'll tell you, it's not enough. trust me, the minimum wage is the USA should be at least $10.00 per hour or more. right now. not 5 or 10 years from now. raising the minimum wage NOW to what I suggest, could significantly head off poverty for a short period of time. do you recall the most recent wage increase? it was 10 years since the last.
A strong work ethic. You are not going to MAKE people have a strong work ethic. This must be taught to children in their early years. Parents should be teaching children at a very early age of the values of making money, saving it, and giving an honest days work, for an honest day's pay. This is a value that is not learned or taught overnight. a child must be groomed and guided into the habit, and not just given a weekly allowance for doing nothing in return.
You are educated. you have planned your future ahead of your time. maybe. but persons who are NOT LIKE YOU are in this world that may make less money than you did, and have a lesser education (possibly) and did not plan as you might have. therefore, they are reliant on the government to help them. for me, I never planned ahead, I was busy making house payments, paying for a cargo van, paying insurance premiums for 1/2 million dollar liability coverage to run cargo, paying utilites, property taxes, homeowners insurance, my own operating expenses and maintenance, and, did not even consider health insurance because I was barely keeping my eyeballs above water. Do me a favor. go to a truckstop, and ask if there are any owner/operators in the restaurant, and ask them how they're doing as a owner/operator, are they making a profit, or, just keeping their heads above water? In fact, go to any retail establishment and ask them about their profit margin. almost anyone you'll talk to will tell you we're in tough times. I'm not trying to get your goat, but you have to know, that if it's tough times economically for everyone else, it's especially tough on the poor. one way to stop this, is for corporations to stop being greedy, and brings jobs lost overseas back home. there are plenty of autoworkers in detroit, out of work because the big 3 sent their assembly jobs to canada and mexico, "cheaper labor".
People that use food stamps shouldn't own cell phones? you come on now.
do you know what basic landline phone service costs these days? cell phones are cheaper. why? because one can pay as they go. I have a cell phone. $10.00 gets me 35 minutes of talk time, $30.00 gets me 105 minutes, it's much much cheaper than paying line service fees, federal and state taxes tacked onto phone bills, plus all the other little incidentals phone companies tack on. so, people with food stamps using cell phones? I can see that. it's probably their only way of keeping in touch with, work? local public aid office? school?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tama
Highdesertmutz Do you really want a socialist state? Do you believe from each according to his ability and to each according to his need? Income redistribution? Or would you prefer a level playing field and the challenge of
success for yourself?
On another note, you have a concern for the poor and the struggles they have. What is the answer to poverty in your opinion? For me it is education and job training, saving, delaying childbirth, getting goals and priorities established and adhering to a strong work ethic.
You mentioned in response to my post that I would lose my life as I know it if I became disabled or ill. That is absolutely not true because I have been thinking about my responsibility for myself in the golden years all my working life. I have good insurance, long-term care, a pension, lif savings, and social security in place should I need it.
I realize people can make mistakes early on in life from which they sometimes can never recover. Education and example from parents and family and the society is important so the rising generations have good modeling. A hand-up is sometimes necessary but a lifetime of entitlement is not except under unusual circumstances. For example, a person may be struck down too early in life to develop a safety net for himself. With no family help it would truly be an emergency and all help should be extended.
For the healthy and young, the path to security is a long one and I don't think it is a priority for many who seek to enjoy the delights of the retail industry and the lifestyle of the rich and famous from the time they leave the womb.
I mean--come on--I have seen people pay for groceries with food stamps and get a call on their cell phone at the same time. EVery single human in this country is not entitled to a comfortable lifestyle. He is entitled to opportunity, encouragement, incentives, and an education--and help when circumstances convene beyond his control--for a limited period of time in most situations--some exceptions duly noted.
nope sorry, never was poor, never will be poor. However, if you work hard in school, get yourself an advanced education (yes its very doable w/o having money) and accomplish something with yourself. I feel poverty has less to do with money and more in lines of lack of motivation and determination and perspiration. This is capitalism remember? giving assistance is to easy to be abused.
So you never will be poor?
Do you have a crystal ball? How do you know what the future will bring for you?
You can prepare all you want, but life still has a way of springing surprises on you.
Kinda like all the foreclosures, right. Who say they will ever pay them?
Fannie and Freddie have $223 billion of bonds due by the end of the quarter and their success in rolling over that debt may determine whether they can avoid a federal bailout. Fannie has about $120 billion of debt maturing through Sept. 30, while Freddie has $103 billion, according to figures provided by the government-chartered companies. Bottom line a bail out.
IndyMac and many other banks - Federal Bail-out
How about all the corporations retirement plans that the federal governments is now taking over? What is the cost to the tax payer?
So you support corporate bail outs?
No. I was suggesting that those were instances of corporate bail outs. In other words, yes there is a form of corporate welfare, but no, the Bear deal and the Freddie/Fannie as yet unresolved issue are not fair examples of corporate welfare for the reasons cited.
In my mind's eye, for the Bear deal to qualify as welfare, it would have to still be Bear Sterns and get something from the government. Instead, the government took Bear from its owners and forced a sale of the company's assets to JP Morgan Chase for little more than the value of the home office real estate property. Then the government, as part of their agreement with Morgan, backed the non-liquid assets of Bear with the availability of $30B in liquidity.
Bear, a company with enormous assets, was caught in a liquidity trap due to their being over invested in Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). The CDOs were being devalued on the open market due to the lack of transparency concerning the true value of the assets. They were created to be semi-liquid instruments backed by mortgage assets, but when the real estate bubble burst, these instruments became less liquid (Read: nobody wanted them). Bear was stuffed to the gills with CDOs and was too slow to unwind the position as the market began changing.
The government stepped in and forced a sale of Bear before a run on the bank could materialize. It was a bold move, but had it not been done Bear could have been the first domino to fall in a recreation of 1929.
Fannie/Freddie: I don't see how you can make the leap from 'Fannie/Freddie have this huge debt' to "bottom line a bail out." without something in between. These are government created entities for the sole purpose of rolling debt to finance real estate holdings all across these United States. Of course they are going to have huge debts.
All markets that have anything to do with real estate financing are in a state of contraction because real estate values are contracting. RE values are contracting because they were over valued due to to the bubble. The bubble happened because of Microsoft. (I gotta make this interesting somehow!)
OK, you don't believe me. Of course there are a lot of complicated reasons for the real estate bubble, but Microsoft is one reason. And, it's not a small one.
With Greenspan in charge in 1999, the entire country was in a panic about Y2K. Billions of dollars were being spent by corporations to try and fix the problem before the calendar changed to 01/01/00. What were they trying to fix? Mostly Windows installations. Embedded systems, network servers, clients, DBMS applications, you name it. It had all been bought and paid for with a complete lack of foresight concerning the hard core fact that the calendar WILL CHANGE TO THE YEAR 2000. And Microsoft was at the center of it all as the company that created and sold an OS based on the 20th century lasting forever.
Bear with me.
At the end of 1999, there was a lot of fear about what would happen. So much uncertainty was there, that Greenspan pumped an inordinate amount of liquidity into the banking system to prevent a potential run on banks. The market boomed into the year 2000 without any Y2K bug, but with too much money in circulation. Then Greenspan preemptively put the brakes on the economy by reducing liquidity to the banks. By the end of 2000 the market had sunk. Greenspan pumped more $$ into the economy trying to ward off a recession and the recovery was sloooww. By 2004 the market was doing quite well, but there were serious problems in real estate. Too much easy money sent too many mortgage brokers out searching for too many qualified home buyers. There weren't enough to go around, so they were loaning money to unqualified home buyers willy nilly. Everybody expected the value appreciation in real estate to go on forever, but it began approaching saturation as speculative money started chasing real estate appreciation as an investment from the millions of little guy investors. The price got too high. The buyers dried up. The values started dropping, and as they say, the rest is history.
If Greenspan hadn't had to act in 1999 to save the economy from the ferocious Y2K bug in the first place, the real estate bubble might have never happened.
I'm not going to try to talk about corporate retirement plans. I don't know the actual facts, and I refuse to engage in wild speculation.
My stance is that there is corporate welfare, but the Bear deal is not it, and neither is Fannie/Freddie.
If a person retires from their work and had a retirement plan, and are at the age when social security is supposed to kick in, depending on what the retirement pay is, the social security administration will base the benefit paying only a certain dollar amount, meaning, one will not receive their full social security dollar amount if the person has a retirement fund. The administration doesn't want a person receiving more than what "they" think you should. The "administration" wants to keep you poor in your golden years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by highdesertmutz
First, not a socialist state, but rather a socialist Republic.
Employ everyone that can work. Forced employment? maybe. you will work for your daily pay. no free ride, unless you are a person with a disability, those would be well cared for on the government's funds. Employ citizens even if the jobs are meaningless or require less skills than someone can attain in the private sector. employ everyone of legal age.
Standardized healthcare for the whole population, at a fair price or standard deduction, but, equal in dollar amount to all, and affordable to all. In other words, you earned 250K last year, and I only earned 35K, your healthcare and mine would be the same, no omitions. But since you made me than I, that wouldn't make any difference, we would pay the same premium for the insurance coverage.
Planned parenthood: government cannot dictate to persons or families how many children they may have, nor, when to have them, like China does. But, if you wish to have children, you'd be assessed the same premium amount that you would pay for yourself per child, and this might discourage you from having 15 children and being on a welfare system. Planned parenthood does not include free condoms at school or birth control / contraceptives just handed out to teens anymore! force parents to take a more vital role in rearing their children! presently, children are handed out these sort of items without parental consent, and without their knowledge, this needs to stop. No more teen pregnancies.
You speak of golden years. most people who may not have the education that you have are out in the work force earning minimum wages. you tell me how a person working a minimum of one job, with utilities, rent, transportation costs to and from work, and buying food is supposed to even be able to afford their golden years when life is a daily struggle just to make ends meet? People who work these types of low pay hourly jobs basically have nothing to look foreward to as far as the golden years are concerned. they are dependent on making it to retirement age, and receiving social security. and, let me tell you, social security does not give a person who made less than 35K a year a lot of benefit, they just barely get by. If you think I'm wrong about this, ask anyone who is on social security, and they'll tell you, it's not enough. trust me, the minimum wage is the USA should be at least $10.00 per hour or more. right now. not 5 or 10 years from now. raising the minimum wage NOW to what I suggest, could significantly head off poverty for a short period of time. do you recall the most recent wage increase? it was 10 years since the last.
A strong work ethic. You are not going to MAKE people have a strong work ethic. This must be taught to children in their early years. Parents should be teaching children at a very early age of the values of making money, saving it, and giving an honest days work, for an honest day's pay. This is a value that is not learned or taught overnight. a child must be groomed and guided into the habit, and not just given a weekly allowance for doing nothing in return.
You are educated. you have planned your future ahead of your time. maybe. but persons who are NOT LIKE YOU are in this world that may make less money than you did, and have a lesser education (possibly) and did not plan as you might have. therefore, they are reliant on the government to help them. for me, I never planned ahead, I was busy making house payments, paying for a cargo van, paying insurance premiums for 1/2 million dollar liability coverage to run cargo, paying utilites, property taxes, homeowners insurance, my own operating expenses and maintenance, and, did not even consider health insurance because I was barely keeping my eyeballs above water. Do me a favor. go to a truckstop, and ask if there are any owner/operators in the restaurant, and ask them how they're doing as a owner/operator, are they making a profit, or, just keeping their heads above water? In fact, go to any retail establishment and ask them about their profit margin. almost anyone you'll talk to will tell you we're in tough times. I'm not trying to get your goat, but you have to know, that if it's tough times economically for everyone else, it's especially tough on the poor. one way to stop this, is for corporations to stop being greedy, and brings jobs lost overseas back home. there are plenty of autoworkers in detroit, out of work because the big 3 sent their assembly jobs to canada and mexico, "cheaper labor".
People that use food stamps shouldn't own cell phones? you come on now.
do you know what basic landline phone service costs these days? cell phones are cheaper. why? because one can pay as they go. I have a cell phone. $10.00 gets me 35 minutes of talk time, $30.00 gets me 105 minutes, it's much much cheaper than paying line service fees, federal and state taxes tacked onto phone bills, plus all the other little incidentals phone companies tack on. so, people with food stamps using cell phones? I can see that. it's probably their only way of keeping in touch with, work? local public aid office? school?
Ahh yes, capitalism, the act of stealing from the poor and less fortunate, and giving to the rich, to become richer, like big oil. (stealing from the poor?) yes, by paying hard working people minimum wages, and keeping the poor at corporate armslength distance. slave labor is alive and free, for instance, firms that hire illegal immigrants that do not pay minimum wages, so they can achieve their goal of profitabilty. so far, 50,000 illegals have been rounded up who were employed by companies or corporations, who know it is illegal to hire or employ aliens. doable? I don't think so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nate14ri
nope sorry, never was poor, never will be poor. However, if you work hard in school, get yourself an advanced education (yes its very doable w/o having money) and accomplish something with yourself. I feel poverty has less to do with money and more in lines of lack of motivation and determination and perspiration. This is capitalism remember? giving assistance is to easy to be abused.
Dear dr. bull winkus, much of what you post here is true, but, don't you think as I do, that, Americans have been riding this bubble of over-inflated real estate pricing, not living within their means and just living off of credit for let's say at least 20 years previous to the year 2000. after all, Americans, some, not all, were applying for and receiving loans that they just couldn't pay back? I used to receive at least 5 credit card and mortgage loan offers in the mail every week when I was working, now I receive one a week. do you think Americans pretty much dug their own financial graves? by not being able to keep up with credit cards and their own mortgages?
Now that you have posted that you are in belief that corporate welfare exists, do you think it's right for the feds to bail these worthless paper writers out, or, do you think much as I do, let 'em go belly up?
I'm of the belief that Americans pretty much put themselves in a bind from bankers and companies handing out credit to folks who just couldn't afford it, too much of something good isn't good at all. I was taught to use moderation and not to abuse or, use too much of a good thing. I also think that lending institutions are to blame too, making credit so easy to acquire to consumers.
do you think history will repeat itself? by the 1930's, some 900+ banks folded due to bad debts, and customer withdrawls.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bull Winkus
No. I was suggesting that those were instances of corporate bail outs. In other words, yes there is a form of corporate welfare, but no, the Bear deal and the Freddie/Fannie as yet unresolved issue are not fair examples of corporate welfare for the reasons cited.
In my mind's eye, for the Bear deal to qualify as welfare, it would have to still be Bear Sterns and get something from the government. Instead, the government took Bear from its owners and forced a sale of the company's assets to JP Morgan Chase for little more than the value of the home office real estate property. Then the government, as part of their agreement with Morgan, backed the non-liquid assets of Bear with the availability of $30B in liquidity.
Bear, a company with enormous assets, was caught in a liquidity trap due to their being over invested in Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). The CDOs were being devalued on the open market due to the lack of transparency concerning the true value of the assets. They were created to be semi-liquid instruments backed by mortgage assets, but when the real estate bubble burst, these instruments became less liquid (Read: nobody wanted them). Bear was stuffed to the gills with CDOs and was too slow to unwind the position as the market began changing.
The government stepped in and forced a sale of Bear before a run on the bank could materialize. It was a bold move, but had it not been done Bear could have been the first domino to fall in a recreation of 1929.
Fannie/Freddie: I don't see how you can make the leap from 'Fannie/Freddie have this huge debt' to "bottom line a bail out." without something in between. These are government created entities for the sole purpose of rolling debt to finance real estate holdings all across these United States. Of course they are going to have huge debts.
All markets that have anything to do with real estate financing are in a state of contraction because real estate values are contracting. RE values are contracting because they were over valued due to to the bubble. The bubble happened because of Microsoft. (I gotta make this interesting somehow!)
OK, you don't believe me. Of course there are a lot of complicated reasons for the real estate bubble, but Microsoft is one reason. And, it's not a small one.
With Greenspan in charge in 1999, the entire country was in a panic about Y2K. Billions of dollars were being spent by corporations to try and fix the problem before the calendar changed to 01/01/00. What were they trying to fix? Mostly Windows installations. Embedded systems, network servers, clients, DBMS applications, you name it. It had all been bought and paid for with a complete lack of foresight concerning the hard core fact that the calendar WILL CHANGE TO THE YEAR 2000. And Microsoft was at the center of it all as the company that created and sold an OS based on the 20th century lasting forever.
Bear with me.
At the end of 1999, there was a lot of fear about what would happen. So much uncertainty was there, that Greenspan pumped an inordinate amount of liquidity into the banking system to prevent a potential run on banks. The market boomed into the year 2000 without any Y2K bug, but with too much money in circulation. Then Greenspan preemptively put the brakes on the economy by reducing liquidity to the banks. By the end of 2000 the market had sunk. Greenspan pumped more $$ into the economy trying to ward off a recession and the recovery was sloooww. By 2004 the market was doing quite well, but there were serious problems in real estate. Too much easy money sent too many mortgage brokers out searching for too many qualified home buyers. There weren't enough to go around, so they were loaning money to unqualified home buyers willy nilly. Everybody expected the value appreciation in real estate to go on forever, but it began approaching saturation as speculative money started chasing real estate appreciation as an investment from the millions of little guy investors. The price got too high. The buyers dried up. The values started dropping, and as they say, the rest is history.
If Greenspan hadn't had to act in 1999 to save the economy from the ferocious Y2K bug in the first place, the real estate bubble might have never happened.
I'm not going to try to talk about corporate retirement plans. I don't know the actual facts, and I refuse to engage in wild speculation.
My stance is that there is corporate welfare, but the Bear deal is not it, and neither is Fannie/Freddie.
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energy company on my mind
(I gotta make this interesting somehow!)
