MaxKts

This article mirrors what I told ALPA National in the presidential candidate endorsement survey.

Maybe they will read this and stop worrying about endorsing a candidate for president and realize who really makes the decisions/laws that affect our lives!


Never mind - there I go thinking again

W0XOFF

WELL !! DAMM !! SOMEBODY 'gets it' . . they stopped teaching 'civics' and all that important stuff a couple generations ago, so all the doofuses believe all the c rap coming out of the mouths of the liars that 'it is all Boosh's fault', when ALL the power (tax, spend and law making) of our form of government comes from Congress.

DON'T get me wrong. I AM a Vigilante and don't care much for the resident of El Casa Blanco, BUT, I WAS infuriated when MY union supported 'the other guy' last time around . . being Navy myself and all.

In essence, my fellow citizens are uneducated. . . or more appropriately, propagandized.

Laughing_Jakal

Clowns to the left of me......Jokers to the right...........here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

FR8Hauler

A prophet is never loved in his own country.

jungle

We get the government we deserve. When most of us don't know which countries border ours, trouble is bound to lie ahead.

⌐ AV8OR WANNABE

Mine is surrounded by Kentucky, one of them Virginias, and ... Jorgia I think..., there might be a few more but they don't sell whiskey on weekends so they don't count...

MEMA300

That article passes the buck. Last I remember the president has the right to VETO any bill passed by congress. I think the veto was designed to protect us from clowns. How often does that happen? Somebody google it for me. I am about to watch football.

W0XOFF

It's folks like you who are part of the problem.

You 'remember'?

Do you even have a clue how 'things' work in DC? Most don't. While you play couch potato, Rome is burning. Call your Senators and Congressman at 202-224-3121 and tell them NO BAILOUT ! Your children's children's children are having their heritage sold out from under them.

These politicians may act like a bunch of dumb a$$e$, but they are smart enough to know how the system works -and game it.

Without a Presidential 'Line Item' VETO, like some Governors have, these turkeys clutter & LOAD UP otherwise good, important and vitally necessary Bills with unimaginable CRAP that is ruining the country.

Most times the President has no other choice than to sign something that is loaded with loathsome stuff, just to keep the country running.

And you KNOW these scum are way too smart to give the President a 'Line Item VETO' that he/she could use against this underhanded tactic.

Get off the sofa! Make the calls!(202-224-3121) Become part of the solution and not part of the problem. There are 'market solutions' being proposed that will fix the problems. A 'Bail Out' will be the ruination of our way of life as we know it.

Beertini

I would like to go on the record as saying that my original post had nothing to do with the "P" (olitic) word.

Can't you guys hear the Black 727...er...I mean the Black Helicopter circling?

See you all in the APC waterboarding room.

Beertini

⌐ AV8OR WANNABE

This 'bailout' is very important to our profession (and the entire country) and therefore I'm replying to this 'political' thread.

W0xOFF - I followed your advice, called the number and left a voice mail telling them the bail out is a MUST!

It's not perfect but it's much better than the alternative which is a total collapse of our banking system. You think we have problems now? Yeah, just imagine how fast this country would come to its knees if all our banks were to default.

Besides, I don't think 'government bailout' is the appropriate name for this program. I think temporary government assistance program is a more appropriate term. Why? Because just like a 401K – they will not lose any money until they actually sell off the assets they’re about to purchase at a huge discount and they won’t sell off those assets for some time. This program will simply buy out bad loans from banks and will then 'keep' them until the economy improves, probably for years.

Once the economy improves the loans will be auctioned off and we, yes the tax payers, might actually make some good money on this deal. There's a good precedence to this package - please read the article below.

In a nutshell in the early 90’s the Swedish government was forced to buy out over 20 billion dollars worth of 'junk loans" from many Swedish banks and institutions that were collapsing left and right - the economy improved within a year or so after this 'bailout' and once the loans were eventually auctioned off the Swedish government ended up making very healthy profits on those ‘junk loans’.

(Note - the article below mentions 67 billion Swedish crowns which at the time was equivalent to some 11 billion US dollars [rate of 5.5 SEK to 1 US$ at the beginning of the crisis]. However it leaves out the price the government paid for buying out several major financial institutions before this bailout was put in effect which was close to 10 billion US dollars. That's why I use a total price tag of 20 billion US dollars for their program)

If you say that 20 billion is nothing compared to 700 billion you need to remember that the US has over 300 million citizens while Sweden has 9 million so percentage-wise it’s about the same. $2,300 per citizen here (700,000,000,000/300,000,000) while Sweden was about $2,200 per citizen (20,000,000,000/9,000,000) - additionally Sweden had to lay off thousands and thousands of public sector workers which I hope will happen here too (for the sake of trimming our budget). Hope I didn’t screw up my math here…

So the very same scenario could play out here - and if we (tax payers) end up make zero dollars in profits (which personally I don’t believe will happen) it's still a much better deal than the severe economic depression that would hit our country without this bailout.

The main reason, not the only reason but the reason #1 to this crisis in my view was the political correctness in our country which was forcing banks and financial institutions to give out loans and mortgages to people with very shady credit histories. It's so easy to get sued for discrimination nowadays and now we are paying the price for political correctness running amok.

Here's the FT article...


Policy chiefs have an eye on ‘Swedish model’
By Christopher Brown-Humes
Published: September 21 2008 22:36 | Last updated: September 21 2008 22:36

When people talk about the “Swedish model”, they are not usually referring to the way that Sweden resolved its acute banking crisis in the early 1990s.

But the way Sweden acted – and in particular its adoption of the good bank/bad bank model – is highly relevant to the financial system bail-out now being implemented in the US. “Hank and Ben learning Swedish” was how Lombard Street Research headlined its latest piece of research on Friday.

Like the current US financial crisis, the origins of the Swedish banking crisis lay in the credit markets – which were deregulated in 1985 – and in a finance and real estate bubble that eventually collapsed.

The chickens came home to roost in the early 1990s after a massive pile-up of non-performing loans across the Swedish banking system.

Five of the country’s seven biggest banks required state support or huge injections of capital from their own shareholders. Two banks – Nordbanken and Göta Bank – were taken over by the state and eventually merged.

Crucial to maintaining confidence was the blanket guarantee for creditors – not shareholders – that Sweden put under the whole banking market in late 1992 and kept in place for nearly four years.

After taking over Nordbanken, the state dumped SKr67bn of non-performing loans into a bad bank called Securum. After taking over the collateral behind them, Securum eventually found itself with an extraordinary portfolio of assets – they included the British Embassy building in Burma, an air charter operation in Zimbabwe and a skiing lodge in the US – as well as European property and Swedish industrial operations.

Securum was given a SKr24bn equity injection and 15 years to dispose of its assets. In fact, helped by a recovery in property and stock markets in the mid-1990s, it ended up being wound down after just five years. By that time it had recouped nearly SKr13bn.

More important, however, Sweden’s response to the crisis meant it cost the taxpayer very little, if anything – another reason why US policymakers have been keen to talk to some of the decision-makers who were directly involved in clearing up the Swedish mess.

Although Sweden originally spent about SKr65bn to shore up the system, it got most of the money back. Much of this came from dividends and the eventual re-privatisation of Nordbanken. The government still holds a 19.9 per cent stake in Nordea, the bank that Nordbanken is now part of following a series of pan-Nordic mergers.

One secret to Securum’s success was that it took an activist approach to its investments to maximise value rather than just seeing itself as a liquidating company.

Jan Kvarnström, a former chief executive of Securum, always felt other countries could learn from the Swedish experience. “You have to get your hands on the underlying assets quickly, get control over the cash flow and manage the assets to add value to them. It is very important to prove your professional credentials to the market and not to be seen simply as an asset dump,” he once said.

FT.com / In depth - Policy chiefs have an eye on Swedish model?