The Bailout Bill: Lies, Lies, Lies! No oversight in sight!

Click on the title for this posting & See page 6, Line 13, for the definition of "Troubled Assets". The Secretary of the Treasury can spend the money on any asset he deems necessary as long as the FED Chairman agrees and they notify, not ask permission from, Congress. How can the program ever be held accountable if the Secretary of the Treasury just has to say "it was necessary"? Will the FED Chairman stick his neck out and get in the way of administering this money? No! So, what did you guys do this weekend? Read the bailout bill, pardon me, law?

The Real Estate Value Marketing Pitch, Did you fall for it?

As far as I can tell, the run-up in home prices over the last 15 years was due to 1. the cost of money going down, and 2. that money being made available to a greater number of people. The result was a greater number of total homes in the US and the appreciation of all property. I don't think the bailout package materially impacts either of these, and we will see an acceleration of losses in the values of our homes and all classes of real estate. The BS about holding up the value of our homes was simply a marketing ploy. I would wager that only an insignificant portion of the $700 B will go towards purchasing true mortgage backed securities. Did anyone else notice how they stopped using the term mortgage related in the second sales pitch for the package? Did anyone else notice they gave Paulson the authority to use it for anything he wanted in the final version? Yes, I know the bill was really about credit liquidity and fully understand the implications of that. Have you read the title of this blog? Congress should have called the bailout package the Talladega Nights Final Car Wreck Scene Act. All it's going to do is prolong the agony for the average American. I just hope the politicians keep their lips to themselves at the end of this comedy/horror flick. Check it out for yourself. Just click on the title of this post to link to the actual text and go to page 3, Sec. 2 Purposes.

What if we just talk about an American Jubilee?

How motivated would Wall Street be to solve this crisis with their much advertised creativity and intellect if Main Street began talking about and pushing Congress to have all debt forgiven?

What are possible safe havens for individual wealth?

Again, this is a last resort option and we are assuming that the financial world as we know it has changed dramatically. It will be a cash or barter system until credit facilities can be restarted albeit more conservatively than we have seen in the last 15 years. I would think various hard assets that you can physically lay your hands on would be a significant part of the mix. And, assuming stocks have been thoroughly devalued to their hard asset value and the companies no longer owe monies for previous debt obligations, they might be a suitable proxy for owning the hard assets directly. And of course, some amount of cash or coinage in the hands of us, the general public, would help restart merchant related buying and selling.