Nearly 2 trillion already spent once the Feds get this $700 billion - see this list from reuters and cnbc -

This has an entire list of where much of this money has been used, however, I noticed it is not a complete list because it doesn’t include the $180 billion just sent from the Federal Reserve into the global markets for liquidity a few days ago. It seems like one day last week, the announcement on the news said a new large chunk was being routed through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up some of the market “securities” that are illiquid mortgage-backed securities. Their hands are certainly quicker than my eyes.

A $1.8 Trillion Bailout: Where the Money’s Going -

By Reuters | 21 Sep 2008 | 04:47 PM ET

The U.S. Treasury Department is working through the weekend with Congress to craft a plan to spend as much as $700 billion to absorb bad mortgages and other assets from bank or other institution balance sheets to keep the financial system from collapsing.

The move comes close on the heels of an $85 billion Federal Reserve rescue of American International Group and the Treasury’s takeover of housing finance firms Fannie Mae Freddie Mac

The Treasury plan, which follows a new federal guarantee for money market fund holdings, would push Washington’s potential bailout tab to $1.8 trillion.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26808715

**

Apparently nearly two trillion dollars isn’t going to be enough either because our economy has very real systemic problems with the integrity of its fundamental structures. Maybe they ought to fix the holes in the bucket before putting more water in it.

Oh yeah, and its bring your own fuel, if you want to run around the South anywhere in a vehicle that doesn’t have two wheels and some pedals.

My list of what is lacking in the US government $700 billion dollar bail out plan - Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips

Why aren’t we getting these elements in the financial bail out plan being forced on us by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, Wall Street and the banking industry? (This is my list of what is lacking.)

Statistics and probability involved in using $700 billion and altering the free market dynamics therewith

macroeconomic policy in the public domain for extant systems

integrity - justification - structural deficiencies resulting from this action

socio-economic probabilities

policy constraints

econometric analysis of outcomes

and parameters for resultant conflicts

divergence theory and collusion

deficit spending macroeconomic results (known)

growth dynamics (probabilities)

outcome scenarios - event horizon and logistics

**

political doctrine constraining application

foreign policy dynamic component for international cooperation and continued progress

Note - In Congress today,

they couldn’t convey a clear understanding because they didn’t (and don’t) have one.

So, either its not their plan which is very likely or what?

are they hiding something that would explain why the only way they are willing to approach this is to bail out the creditors involved?

- Written by Cricket Diane C Phillips, 09 - 23 -08

The Danger - the Economy in the US is based on a con game - Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips

So, the banking, finance and investment industry has taken advantage of our ignorance and made fools out of all of us. The politicians laughed in their sleeves and mocked us for not catching on, all the while in full knowledge of what was going on. And, you think I’m crazy?

I’m not the one that sunk hard-earned money into a 401K that is worth half its value now. I’m not the one who sold “securities” that were constructed on air with nothing to back them up. I’m not the one that borrowed money leveraged against them nor the one that sold them around the world.

I’m not the one who created a counterfeit form of US currency in the form of credit default swaps and complicated derivative products designed to get assets in return for nothing. I’m not the one who built businesses upon this nor that was in the enforcement business that should’ve stopped it. I’m not the one who ignored the international monetary commissions about correcting all this.

I’m not the one who acted like it would all be okay so long as everyone believes it is and keeps buying the worthless paper for more than the last person did. I’m not the one that it won’t hurt anybody or made the choice to refuse regulating or legislating appropriately for it.

How dare you tell me or anyone to relax, calm down and take a deep breath. Your games are foul. Your destruction of the very founding first principles of democracy and our capitalist system aren’t even sane.

As you’ve reduced our world respect and standing to a complete joke of arrogance and contempt for everything we stood for, you and your Wall Street buddies turn to blame everyone but yourselves. You can discredit what I may say about it all - how is that going to make any difference?

Our industries are a poor shadow of what is innovative in the world. Our stock market is a loose cannon imploding on its own corruption and greed. Our politicians warm unearned seats by their own self-serving complacency and willingness to sell every principle of America down the river to protect their own riches and positions of power.

Our voices aren’t heard, our interests aren’t protected and our representation in our government is extraordinarily lacking. The current planned bailouts and already consummated bailouts are evidence of a government serving the interests only of themselves and their rich friends. They want to force it to be done in a short period of time without any recourse through the courts if it turns out to be unconstitutional to have done it, such that no new administration elected by our choices could possibly ever interfere with protecting their friends’ interests.

This isn’t about a feeling of confidence, mood or emotion. The lies upon which our current markets rest are depleting the valued resources which once represented something. Now they don’t offer jobs or job growth, nor secured tangible assets nor, in fact do they stand on or offer anything to the American people.

Our nationalization of a private company without so much as a consideration by our representatives in Congress undermined the Constitutional basis of our government and the capitalist principles of our economy. And, you would judge me to be the crazy one?

Around the world, there is disgust and dismay for the corruption of the economic system and the current behavior of our government concerning it. The financial industries and US government financial branches were warned ahead of time to correct the accounting abnormalities, resolve the unsecured debt instruments being packaged and resold, fix the unregulated “insurance” business of derivatives and their complex bond default swaps, and told that to not do so threatened the stability of the global markets and monetary systems.

Look around the world, they are mocking us as our diplomats and state department officials seek to push our policies of free market economy and representative democratic government on others. While we are using socialist, communist and dictatorial policies and practices in this and other eminent situations, the rest of the world is dropping their level of willingness to put up with America and the arrogance of demands for others to conform to a model the US isn’t honoring.

As homeowners across the United States have lost their jobs and homes, where do we find the stories of their “new lives” in tent cities, campgrounds, parking lots and streets across America? Is it in our press with our precious freedom of the press and rights to freedom of speech? No, - it’s only made public in other countries where there is a willingness to show the New Great Depression in America with their contempt about our complete refusal to address it at all.

When the stock market and US economy was actually in grave danger earlier this year, did the US press cover the reality of the situation where solutions could be given and created? Of course not, out of deference to the superstition that to tell the truth of the situation would somehow make it so.

In fact, until the reality could no longer be avoided as a negative evident to everyone, there were still “experts” saying it was all alright and simply a “bubble”. With a dollar worth little more than ten cents in 1976 money based on its actual ability to buy something, the “experts” continued to say that there was not a problem. And the US government insisted it would all be okay.

Now - who is living in a deluded fantasy land? Is it me or the people who’ve lost the equity in their own homes and can’t sell them for the money owed on them? Or the people trying to get gasoline for cars they can no longer afford now that their credit cards are maxed out? Or the people that are applying for jobs where 78,000 other applicants are vying for the same job that think there will be a job for them “right around the corner”?

When you’ve had the position as a decision-maker in all this - how is it you figured that doing whatever Wall street friends thought was best would work out? Didn’t it occur to you that anything which requires “confidence” to keep its value is a con game intended to profit for no real return? It was a con game. We were had. They got away with it. There is nothing but air backing it up. Countries around the world are realizing they got “had” too. What did you think would happen? It was a con.

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 09-22-08, USA

It doesn’t matter if everyone on the Hill, and on the Street are in on the game - its still a con built on lies.

United States Thomas Jefferson words for today and US economic meltdown in international press - cricketdiane

For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?” –Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:192

Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government

Judicial Review

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1030.htm

**

“For the Judiciary to interpose in the Legislative department between the constituent and his representative, to control them in the exercise of their functions or duties towards each other, to overawe the free correspondence which exists and ought to exist between them, to dictate what may pass between them and to punish all others, to put the representative into jeopardy of criminal prosecution, of vexation, expense and punishment before the Judiciary if his communications, public or private, do not exactly square with their ideas of fact or right or with their designs of wrong, is to put the Legislative department under the feet of the Judiciary, is to leave us, indeed, the shadow but to take away the substance of representation, which requires essentially that the representative be as free as his constituents would be, that the same interchange of sentiment be lawful between him and them as would be lawful among themselves were they in the personal transaction of their own business; is to do away the influence of the people over the proceedings of their representatives by excluding from their knowledge by the terror of punishment, all but such information or misinformation as may suit their own views.” –Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Petition, 1797. ME 17:359

“[A very capital defect in a constitution is when] all the powers of government, legislative, executive and judiciary result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. ME 2:162

“I said to [President Washington] that if the equilibrium of the three great bodies, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, could be preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw that the Executive had swallowed up the Legislative branch.” –Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1792. ME 1:318

Unlimited Powers are Always Dangerous

“Nor should [a legislative body] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes and conclude that… unlimited powers will never be abused because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people, when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. ME 2:164

from -

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1070.htm

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1843168,00.html?cnn=yes

How We Became the United States of France

By Bill Saporito Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008

This is the state of our great republic: We’ve nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We’re about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they’re a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake.

Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by a half dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn. and FedExed to Washington D.C. to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We’re now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride. Italy? Sure, it’s had four governments since last Thursday, but none of them would have allowed this to go on; the Italians know how to rig an economy.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3660839,00.html

Finance | 21.09.2008

German Politicians Wary of US Financial Rescue Plans

On Saturday, German Chancellor Merkel told a meeting of conservative politicians in Linz, Austria that it was irresponsible for the US to let major banking and credit institutions operate with too little government oversight.

“It cannot work like that on an international level,” Merkel said.

Merkel said that she had tried to win support for greater transparency and regulation on international markets at the G-8 conference last year, but that governments including the US did not heed her.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Merkel has been bluntly critical of US failures in the current crisis

Germany had expressed fears that hedge funds could threaten the stability of the financial system through their heavy reliance on borrowing to finance risky trading strategies. It has also raised concerns about private equity funds.

German politicians are skeptical about a $700 billion US bailout of markets and of calls to take similar measures as Chancellor Merkel criticized Washington for failing to implement stringent market controls.

A growing chorus of German politicians questioned over the weekend whether the unprecedented US rescue package meant to inject liquidity into the financial system would help to stem the crisis which has sent world markets into a tailspin.

“I have doubts whether that method is really the most clever one,” Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) told business daily Handelsblatt.

http://www.france24.com/en/20080918-wall-street-winners-losers-financial-crisis-investment-banks-commercial-short-sellingInvestment banks vs commercial banks

Thursday 18 September 2008

By Marie Valla

FINANCIAL CRISIS

Wall Street’s winners and losers

Thursday 18 September 2008

The collapse of Wall Street’s investment banking giants has left many analysts wondering whether this is the end of the banking system as we know it. Amid the rubble, banks whose activities are more diversified are emerging as the winners of the day.

“This crisis looks a lot like the 1929 crash because banks are once again caught in the middle,” explains Vincent Catillon, an expert on crises in the banking system from the French Clermont-Ferrand University. “After 1929, banks were divided into investment and commercial banks to limit the damage. In the current crisis, we thought commercial banks would be the most affected, but it is the other way round. The so-called ‘universal banks’ are comparatively better off because they can rely on their deposits.”

The main difference between a commercial bank and an investment bank is that the former earns revenue by issuing primary loans from its pool of deposits while an investment bank brings debt and equity offerings to market for a fee.

Because their assets are tied to mortgages whose value has been falling in a tight credit market, investment banks’ stocks started crumbling over the last few months. At the end of last week, Merrill Lynch was trading for $17.05, well below what it was worth at its peak in early 2007, when its shares traded above $98.

http://www.france24.com/en/business-interview-david-wyss-chief-economist-standard-and-poors-wall-street-finacial-crisis-banks-fed-&navi=ECONOMIE

THE BUSINESS INTERVIEW

Standard and Poor’s chief economist talks about finance’s future

Friday 19 September 2008

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the Fed rescued AIG, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became bank- holding companies. Raphael Kahane askS David WYSS, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s what lies ahead on Wall Street.

Wall Street has had yet another crazy week. But this time, the financial crisis has spiraled out of control. It’s not just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed has had to rescue AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, to save it from bankruptcy. The US Federal Reserve approved applications on Sunday from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies.

This comes after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, and Bank of America moved to acquire Merrill Lynch.
Governments have tried to step up to the plate with a degree of intervention not seen since the Great Depression. Central banks are injecting massive amounts of cash to try to resolve the lending crisis that has plagued banks.

A year after the beginning of the sub-prime meltdown, the world economy is now entering into the next stage of the credit crisis, one that could potentially be more problematic than what we have seen over the past year.

Washington and Wall Street are lost in their own concepts about reality - Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips - 2008

I am convinced that there is a rarefied (thin) air around places like Wall Street and Washington, D.C. - its as if because everyone agrees that a thing is so and is a certain way, then it therefore is. And, since no other viewpoint or perspective is given credence - any other valuable insight and its resulting good judgment is lost. Things that would not make any good sense in light of the facts and factual reality anywhere else, make the rounds in Wall Street and Washington as if they are perfectly reasonable when they are not. Anything that differs from the way they want to believe it is and the way they all mostly agree it is - simply gets discredited, mocked and ignored.

So, I thought about this and it occurs to me that if a person were looking at me and the house behind them was catching fire, would I really be concerned with convincing them of what they couldn’t see was endangering them and whether there is a fire or a matter of my opinion about a fire or why I think there is a fire? Or would I just shove them out of harm’s way and go put out the fire? Some things genuinely aren’t a matter of rhetoric.

Saying this is to say - we have people making decisions both in Wall Street and in Washington that have never bought their own groceries or had to make a choice between their car insurance and having the electricity bill paid. The rain never touches their heads, the pavement never touches their feet and ideas of what is what are constrained by the limited, rarefied environment where they exist. It makes Disneyland look real in comparison and more in touch with reality.

Written by Cricket Diane C Phillips, 09-20-08, USA
comment to FoxNews Cheryl Casone - “Get Your Gun and Aim” -

http://casone.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/09/18/get-your-gun-and-aim/#comment-825

US Economic Crisis - credit default swaps and derivative products - an opinion of solutions - Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips

A valid opinion about the credit default swap products, credit default instruments and derivatives in the market collapse crisis - US and World Markets -

Don’t buy credit default and derivative instruments out of the game - undermine their premise and destroy the legal use of these credit default instruments. They are unregulated, unauthorized, unqualified and unsecured. Let everyone across the board lose on the “pretended” value of those and make it illegal to ever create them or trade in them again. They are not valid products in the marketplace because they weren’t secured in the first place.

Businesses cannot sell, create nor trade an “insurance” product that is non-collateralized, unsecured and without any real asset value, no matter what premium is being paid for it. That is untenable. Make them all illegal across the board - not the bonds they insure, but the credit default instruments that have been created back-room, over-the-counter, hand to hand.

That one action would insure the solvency of around 90% of the companies and funds that have been dealing in them. The other 10% of these entities can be made solvent by other more traditional means.

Install industry-wide accounting standards and remove (illegalize) all asset classes which are not secured and backed by real, tangible assets. There should no longer be anything that is considered “off balance sheet” accounting practices. That it was considered standard operating policy is a lesson for the future that it may never be tolerated again because of its destructive components.

Have all ratings agencies rate on the same basis of factual evidence and remove the magnitude of power held by these agencies. The ability of ratings agencies to call the shots and manipulate the markets is too great. That much power to force re-collateralization and depletion of resources as companies shift assets to do so has no business sitting in the hands of these ratings agencies.

Force the re-capitalization of those companies and financial institutions that are under capitalized within a specific set of parameters and definitions with a limited time period, even if that is two years out. Define the acceptable legal ways and asset types that are the only ones to be tolerated. And, demand this be done immediately to insure solvency across the markets. The impacts of this one element would go farther to stabilize world economic growth and US economic stability as a whole than any one other thing.

Written by Cricket Diane C Phillips, 09-19-08, USA

Castle In The Sky - digital art by Cricket Diane C Phillips

Castle in the Sky - digital art by cricket diane c phillips - 2008

Angel Song - photo collage by Cricket Diane C Phillips

Angel Song - photo collage by Cricket Diane C Phillips - 2008

Castle Diana - computer digital fantasy art by Cricket Diane C Phillips

Castle Diana - computer art using Bryce - by Cricket Diane C Phillips - 2008

Lady and the Tiger - photo collage by Cricket Diane C Phillips

Lady and the Tiger - photo collage by Cricket Diane C Phillips - 2008