Republicans created bank bailout for $700 billion dollars and now talk about deficit spending?

“We’ve made it pretty clear to our members that we are supporting this bill,” Boehner told reporters after the meeting. “We also have made it clear to our members we expected as many of them who could vote for this to vote for it.”

After bashing the bailout plan for more than a week, rank-and-file Republicans are starting to accept what Boehner and others stated early on: The current economic meltdown is a bad situation – and a massive government intervention in the financial markets is regrettable response – but it’s their only option at this late stage in the crisis.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14054.html

Never once did these sorry ass-scratching sons of bitches like Boehner say – this bailout of the banks is socialism – is wrong and we won’t do it – will create a bigger deficit we can’t afford.

I watched CSPA N during the appropriations committee hearings on amendments to the current stimulus bill. I noted the Republicans stonewalling, undermining any support, following party lines at the expense of common sense and voting to strip the stimulus package of any and all support for regular people in America. They don’t care about the American people, they don’t serve the American people and never once considered their actions when forcing us to pay for their bailout of Wall Street friends and banking interests – most of which they are indebted to and profit from. It is disgusting.

Now, after oppressive tyranny that has run America and her people into the ground over the last thirty years, the overspending that cost us a ten trillion dollar deficit under their control, and no real rights or freedoms left to American citizens, businesses that are in utter ruin, huge unemployment and our country sold to the highest bidder around the world – even our enemies are laughing at our Congressional “leaders” and Republican party.

What a pathetic joke on all of us – and they still talk about us like we are donkeys or asses to be manipulated by stick and carrot. They are screwing us all still today because they refuse to consider being part of the solution or of creating solutions and insist on continuing the same old propaganda and the same old game to profit at our expense.

I refuse to be a citizen supporting the Republican party or the Democratic party, the banks, the big business billionaires, the credit derivatives gamblers, the hedge funds, the stock traders, the brokers, the real estate moguls, and the crap they have forced down all of our throats. There is no change so long as they all stay the same.

Somebody in America ought to sue the shorts off every one of the legislators that voted for the bailouts to banks misappropriating our money to do it. And, a class action suit should be made against the Republican party for misrepresenting their principles to those that have supported them. They didn’t use those principles in action and they should be held accountable.

- cricketdiane, 01-23-09

Banks demand unearned confidence to keep the con game going – bailouts for bankers were criminal

“Banks weren’t intended to be some grand confidence scheme and that’s the only thing they are now. That is the basic problem – their con game has been discovered.”

- cricketdiane, 01-23-09

Why would anyone still believe that banks are now what they used to be? There are safer profitable ways to use money, places to put money and methods for moving money than banks.

The credit rates they offer are unreliable, they change the rules in the middle of the game, they gamble the assets they hold and are so wrapped up in their own con that they believe they can value assets as they want them to be rather than what they are.

They’ve misused the profits from their activities in order to line their own pockets and risked the moneys put with them for safe-keeping. They’ve leveraged every $1 of assets many times over such that they would never actually break even if they started today using sound fiscal management.

Their willingness to trade in exotic extreme risk products and to gamble in financial markets, hedge funds and credit default swaps has decimated the real value of their businesses and destroyed any sound legal standing for their business model. They are a con game.

Davos 2009 – World Economic Forum Meeting – Jan 28 – send requests ideas solutions to CNNI for relay to Davos decision-makers

• Story Highlights
• CNN is asking bloggers to submit questions for us to put to business leaders
• World Economic Forum takes place Jan. 28-Feb. 1 in Davos, Switzerland
• CNN.com users can submit questions by e-mailing deardavos@cnn.com

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/07/davos.deardavos/index.html

http://www.weforum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2009/index.htm
Annual Meeting 2009
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 28 January – 1 February 2009
“Shaping the Post-Crisis World”

During the five-day Meeting, over 2,500 participants from 96 countries will gather in Davos. Around 56% are business leaders, drawn principally from the Forum’s Members – the 1,000 foremost companies from around the world and across economic sectors.

More than 1,400 chief executives and chairpersons from the world’s leading companies are participating this year, the highest ever since the World Economic Forum was founded in 1971.

Other participants from around the world include:
• 250 public figures, including 41 heads of state or government, 60 ministers, 30 heads or senior officials of international organizations and 10 ambassadors
• More than 510 participants from civil society, including 50 heads or representatives of non-governmental organizations, 225 media leaders, 215 leaders from academic institutions and think tanks, 10 religious leaders of different faiths and 10 trade union leaders.

Business leaders from all sectors and from all regions will be well represented among the participants in this year’s Annual Meeting. Other participants include heads of NGOs and labour leaders, Social Entrepreneurs and Young Global Leaders.

http://www.weforum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2009/index.htm
Annual Meeting 2009
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 28 January – 1 February 2009
“Shaping the Post-Crisis World”

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 promises to be one of the most important events in the Forum’s history. The significance of the Meeting is such that more than 40 heads of state and government have already confirmed their participation in Davos-Klosters where they will join business leaders as well as NGOs, Trade Unions and experts from a wide range of fields. The Meeting will be focused on managing the current crisis and shaping the entire post-crisis agenda, from economic reform to climate change.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/728493
Davos 2009 – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
Wednesday January 28, 2009 – Sunday February 1, 2009 from 9:00am – 6:00pm
Davos Congress Center
Davos main street
Davos, Geneva

**  My Note  **

Credit derivatives and complex financial derivative products have made structural systemic fault lines throughout the economies of the world. It is possible to make all such products null and void, but my best guess is that there will be a continuing drive to feed the superstitious belief that if business and government leaders can make everyone believe it will all be okay – then it will all be okay and straighten itself out.

It looks as though business leaders will be there (at Davos) pressuring the change in mark to market accounting back to their own fantasy based accounting practices and exerting their influence to continue feeding themselves at the expense of every government and peoples in the world. That is their use of Washington and I would guess they will do it at Davos as well. Isn’t it at all possible for them to be part of the solution rather than a significant part of the problem?

This shindig promises to be fired up this time since there is an obvious call for true honest accounting and transparency across the board so that real decisions can be made based on reality. If the macro-economics teams can get a word in at all, and be heard over the politics of position and ideologies, party loyalties and big business lobbying – maybe, just maybe an honest dialogue about the truth of the world economic crisis can ensue.

There is no easy point at which solutions can be generated but as long as blind persuasion and biased representations of the facts are allowed to run the day, nothing to solve the problems can occur. Inasmuch as we have all benefited from business and monetary policy, if our business, banking, finance and government leaders would join with macro-economists rather than trying to persuade and push a singular point of view, then solutions could be generated that would be worth trying. Unlikely – but it could happen.

And, that goes for macro-economic experts and economists, too. If these intelligent people would stop their strangle hold on views of economics that no longer apply and weren’t created to deal with this situation – then apply their knowledge and overall understanding to the new economic reality, they could help to generate solutions that would work. We need workable solutions immediately – not three years out, but now – yesterday.

All of the members attending Davos need to understand they have each helped to create the situation and its disastrous results that are unfolding across the entire spectrum of markets and businesses, throughout the entire world. It is possible for solutions that are workable to be put into play and done so quickly. But, it is only through reality-based analysis that the true facts can be used for real workable solutions to be effective. We need solutions that work for today, the way the world is now – not solutions from a world long before today with differences in every elemental fact.

- cricketdiane, 01-23-09

Bank bailouts in US economic crisis cover executive perks bonuses high salaries and keeps those who have driven the companies into the ground

1.2 million dollars = 24 individual jobs at $50,000 each
10 million dollars in executive bonuses = 200 individual jobs at $50,000 per year
10 million dollars in bonuses times 25 executives = 5000 individual employees at $50,000 a year

When company executives spend 1.2 million dollars on their office furnishings – that means they spent the incomes for 24 individual families which could have received $50,000 a year to work in that company to continue making it profitable and to make their own lives financially viable.

Each $53,000,000 bonus paid out to any executive in an American company has cost more than the loss of those funds to one individual who has in many cases driven their company into the ground. It is also the loss of the jobs and employment for 20 individuals for each $1,000,000 spent on those bonuses. Or, in this case – the loss of 1060 employees’ jobs at $50,000 a year for each bonus of 53 million dollars paid.

When bonuses of this scale were, and are being paid out of company profits, these moneys did not belong to the executives – they belonged to the company and its continuing profitability and sustenance.

- cricketdiane, 01-23-09, USA

Bankers don’t need any more bailouts – neither does Wall Street – nor do hedge funds – nor do financial institutions – they need a paradigm shift of magnitude

***
First of all, the banks have made money by using the deposits of our money, charging fees and interest on our money that was placed with them for safe-keeping.

Then, due to their negligence, mismanagement, greed and short-sightedness in the use of “their” assets and ours placed with them, these bankers and their lobbyists pressured our leaders to buy out every bad decision they’ve made and cover their losses.

Second of all, which American citizen agreed to give 7 – 8 thousand dollars of their hard-earned income each year from here on out in order to give the big banks the spending and gambling money as they were already given in TARP, Treasury and Federal Reserve funds last fall and are about to be given again?

And, who was it that decided these bankers were in the right when not once were they using their own money to resolve their bad financial decisions and mismanagement of assets?

Third of all, whether they have their own FICO score or not, big banks and financial institutions have mismanaged assets, why would we give them more funds to gamble away – wouldn’t their credit score be somewhere near zero?

And, tell me how is it that it would have been worse if TARP and other program funds had not been given to the banks? They were insolvent and mismanaged then and still are, credit was and is frozen anyway, the”players” in the banking industry are still gambling their and our assets and they wouldn’t loan to themselves or each other if they had to.

These banks are virtually bankrupt but feeding on every dime any of the rest of us will ever make in our lifetimes. It wouldn’t have been any worse. They lied. Their lobbyists lied. Their political buddies lied. Their paid “experts” lied. And their executives had to have known over many years that there were systemic misrepresentations in the values of the assets they were presenting, both to the public, to shareholders and to the government regulators.

And, without any significant paradigm shift in the financial, banking and investment industries, they will continue feeding off Washington and the rest of us including diverting our tax dollars for their own use while lying to legislators, regulators, shareholders and the public. These financial businesses will continue engaging in poor asset management, using faulty fantasy-based accounting practices, perpetrating shoddy and criminal business practices, gambling with our money and excessively leveraging everything that comes near them.

- cricketdiane, 01-21-09

If bankers, businesses, counties and states had to succeed at getting people on their feet, employed, financially healthy and keep houses in order to receive money – they would do it to get the money from the Fed

If you want success, you have to reward success.
For every home that the banks don’t foreclose, the government could give them a certain amount of money (bailout grants or loans). Then, there would be fewer foreclosures from the companies holding them.

For every homeless person, unemployed person, disadvantaged person that is put on their feet, stabilized and set on the path of independence and financial viability – the government could give the state a certain amount of money (in loans, bailouts, grants, matching funds, etc.). Then, there would be more people in our communities set on their feet and moving forward in their lives.

For every small business that is created or sustained by local and state government grants, aid, mentoring, made accessible to disadvantaged populations, the government could give them a certain amount of money (bailouts, grants, loans, matching funds and the like) provided they prove the viability they’ve created for these businesses and their continued support of them. Then, there would be many new businesses in our communities supporting employment, growth and providing taxes for the state, federal and local governments.

That is the problem we have now – that our programs are set up to encourage state, county, and local governments and third party providers and businesses to fail, to continue to fail, to produce results of their failure to continue receiving federal and state funding and to keep people they serve under their foot forced to also fail to keep the income flow for third party providers and government agencies.

When I’ve gone to vocrehab, the only thing that resulted is money for them to subcontract testing and testing and testing which supported any number of people, state agencies and independent contracts but none of which employed me nor helped to get employment for me. If I waited for them to help when it never yielded employment for me in fact, I would have starved to death.

Unfortunately, if I get well, live independently, start my own business, take care of my own needs, have good mental health and good general health – then there is no income stream for the county and state where I live. It seems like it is all backwards to what it should be.

Just like the shopping centers and stores near me can afford to stay empty and keep their lease rates the same as if they are prime real estate with vitality even though they are not. These have no advantage to putting businesses in their locations – they make more by writing off the prime lease rate as a loss on their tax liabilities. How can any business be started there? In the county where I live, there are no longer grants to small businesses to get started.

The state and local governments have eaten up all of those SBA small business grant moneys for their own operating expenses and haven’t been using these grant moneys for local businesses to be started since the Small Business Administration removed all demarcations for the money to be used as grants for businesses and business startups. Banks get these funds, existing large businesses get them as loans and local governments use them for operating expenses.

- cricketdiane

Policy makers don’t know what it means in the community – let’s tell them

**  My Note  **

Information exchange is a two-way street. If we want better policy, better decisions, better transparency, then we, as Americans must use the paths we can find to make sure our government leaders have the accurate information they need.

The world appears so different at the ground level than it does in Washington, DC that it gives new meaning to the expression, “garbage in – garbage out” as it is used in systems analysis and computer-oriented statistical analysis.

To the extent that Washington doesn’t need to be flooded with information which isn’t pertinent – the idea that the only information available to them is, and has been biased, fragmented, exclusionary, adjusted, “framed and perception managed”, mangled and intentionally “low-balled” means there are comprehensive corrections to be made. Only by interacting with them will these corrections be possible. It is up to each of us as citizens to do it.

Sometimes I think that when our government issues new budget moneys for Medicaid, they don’t realize what that means in the communities where it goes. Generally, here in Georgia it means that in the rush to get at that money, the local and county governments, mental health service industries, state health administrations and industries round up every poor, disabled, elderly, developmentally disadvantaged, mentally ill, foster child, poor family and homeless or outcast and put them in mental hospitals, subject them to services they don’t need and incarcerate them into institutional or program settings.

Personally, I’m sick of seeing it and it has been way too reminiscent of the German Gestapo of the old third reich over the past 30 years, but especially so in the last 12 years. Over 85% of the jailed inmates in our county are disabled and economically disadvantaged among the female population which is significantly higher than the population’s average. It is a use of the Federal and State funds they can get by doing it. Welcome to America for the rest of us.

Do the policy makers in Washington not understand that none of us get that money – we simply get rounded up and toted off to services that support state and county offices, agencies and health industry members? I don’t want to support bankers, stock market traders, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, mental health service providers who live in $400,000 houses while I never get to own a house in my lifetime.

- cricketdiane, 01-22-09

From the new administration’s White house contact information -

White House contact numbers -

Phone Numbers

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD

Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitors Office: 202-456-2121

CONTACT US

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below:
Thank you.
You can also call or write to the President:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Communication — Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency — President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov/

New use of Freedom of Information Act will allow Congressional members and the public access to the real facts? the government agencies hold

The redesigned whitehouse.gov, which went live at 12:01 p.m. ET yesterday just as President Obama officially took office, isn’t fully operational just yet.

• Pool reports. In recent months, The Oval and USA TODAY On Politics passed on many of the notes filed by “pool” reporters who were tracking then-President-elect Obama’s transition and then reporting their observations to the rest of the news media. It looks like the White House wants to put on prominent public display the reports filed by the reporters who will be in each day’s small “pool” of journalists following the new president (the duties are rotated among the news media outlets that cover the White House, including USA TODAY).

On the new whitehouse.gov: ‘Pool’ reports to be public

Jan 21, 2009 – 8.28 a.m.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/01/61698176/1

It was magnificent today hearing President Obama demand that the Freedom of Information Act be used comprehensively across all agencies of the US government.

In the hearings for Timothy Geitner, one of the Congressmen this morning mentioned the continuing difficulty in receiving requested documents, statistics and information from government agencies even as a member of the House or Senate and their committees. Not only has the public been kept from these records, so too have our legislators whose decisions are dependent on accurate, timely and comprehensive information

This decision for openness and transparency by Obama and America’s team in the White House will mean that at a very basic level, decisions can be considered in light of more accurately portrayed facts, more or less. Since the biases of previous fact-gathering will still be written in some of the available information, it will help to have these facts but not do all to rectify the inaccuracies in them. It is a start.

- cricketdiane

A Real Solution to the Global and US economic crisis – Creation of jobs, wealth, prosperity and to restore our economic foundations

Jan 21, 09

When the million plus wealthiest citizens of the United States hire 40 individual Americans each at $50,000 a piece per year, there will be no unemployment problem in America. They have the ability and means to start businesses, to take on the task of employment for America and they have enjoyed the fruits of capitalist bounty without bounds.

That is the solution that will work and work quickly.

As well, if every company in America adds 20% more to their workforce at $50,000 each a year – again, there will no longer be a problem of unemployment and foreclosures in America. And, if we do both plus what our government has suggested to add jobs, then the global economy and America’s will be quickly restored.

Couldn’t we all do that now? We need 40 million jobs added to America and this solves the problem, restores our economy and makes prosperity work.

- cricketdiane, 01-21-09, USA

We need to add at least 22 million good paying jobs in America – not 3 or 4 million – US economic crisis 2009

On CNN’s Lou Dobbs show tonight there was an “expert” saying that we have lost x number of jobs (over 2 million) and because each month another 1.5 million jobs are needed in order to absorb the greater number of employable, therefore we need to add 4 million jobs in America. So, I wrote this to their email because that was about too stupid to not send something to correct it.

I’m appalled at the degree of willingness of paid “experts” to subject us to their perception management tactics, “framing” and interpreting the issues for us, expressing misguided and disingenuous “facts” loosely based on reality, and pretending or projecting that reality is different than it is. Those are the tactics that got us in this mess and kept it going until we’ve damn near lost America because of it. (anyway, I didn’t write this part to tell them at the Lou Dobbs, CNN show – I wrote this below and sent it -

When there are 11.1 million people unemployed and 8.6 million people forced to work part-time when they neither need or want to work part-time (by US government’s low-ball estimates), that is conservatively 19.7 million good-paying jobs America is missing. So, how many jobs need to be put in place right now isn’t even in the neighborhood of 4 million as described by the expert on your show.

America needs 20 million jobs to replace those that have been lost as evidenced by the numbers of unemployed and underemployed currently plus an additional growth of +/- 2 million jobs per month to accommodate our growing population of employable individuals.

The grossly underestimated numbers given by your expert on tonight’s show was a continuing failure by academics, experts, government agencies and news organizations which has been and is still aggravating the problem. There can be no solutions where our larger community believes our economic difficulties are only a fifth of what they actually are. Your audience living in its own small communities around the globe, but especially in the US, already know that the problem is much greater than you are saying because it is being experienced first hand. Why don’t you and your producers know that?

- cricketdiane, 01-20-09