Quote of the Day

I'm on the Long Island Railroad the other day heading as part of my commute to the BCP Washington bureau. I overhear a fellow talking to his friend with a lilting Caribbean accent about women who are calling him claiming that his brother made them pregnant. He's telling them why are you calling me? I did not make you pregnant! Exasperated he tells his companion:

"My life is good but, my family makes it a mess!"

It's kind of the way I feel about whats going on with Washington some days!

The TARP plan was always a turd

I guess the good news for us hard working middle class U.S. taxpayers who pay our bills and debts is that Henry Paulson and the Treasury Department are no longer going to be buying the sub prime crap loans under the Toxic Asset Reduction Program. Which in my book should have been called TURD loans because that is what they are. The idea of using our good tax dollars to buy crap loans from the banks who gave them out does not sit well with this and many other taxpayers. I think Hockeymike 374 speaks for many of us taxpayers:


"How can people be so stupid. Does anyone in congress understand that if you reward irresponsible behavior you will get more of it? I feel like an idiot for paying my bills and living within my means. I would say write your representatives but the last time we did that we were punished by making a 700B dollar bill an 850B dollar bill. This is beyond outrageous. The worst part is this will do nothing to solve the problem. NO more bailouts for corporations or the greedy and irresponsible people who bought homes they could never afford."

Sounds like good advice.

Idiot bankers and us sucker taxpayers

I was on the Amtrak heading down to Washington D.C. last night when I opened up the Financial Times weekend edition. They had a front page story of retiring Andrew Lahde of the hedge fund Lahde Capital. He was one of the few money managers to have correctly predicted the sub prime crisis. One of his funds made a return of 870 per cent last year. In his farewell letter to his investors he talks about the elite “aristocracy” and the "idiot bankers" who were on the other side of his bets. You know the same ones we middle class taxpayers will be bailing out to the tune of a trillion dollars thanks to the lame brains in like my Congressman Tim Bishop and others. Here are some of the money quotes:

"Saying he was “in this game for the money”, Mr Lahde went on to mock those who traded with him.
“The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking.”
“These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.
“All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”

Thank you Mr Laude for confirming what I suspected all along.

BAILOUT: The taxpayer view

Congress and the bailout: Bad hand or bad idea?

I've got Nancy (the putz) Pelosi's words ringing in my head after she and the other sheep in Congress railroaded through the 900 billion dollar bailout pork bill. She said that the were dealt a "bad hand" like the members of Congress were at a casino. Yep, she and my Congressman Tim Bishop and Senators Clinton and Schumer were gambling alright. With our money! What was the result of their roll of the dice? Today's Washington Post has the money quotes:

"Last week, the nation's political leaders said the financial system would collapse unless they passed a $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street. On Monday, the first day of trading after the plan passed, the financial system continued to melt down anyway. "

The American people told congress that this was a bad idea they did not listen.

I was robbed

I had this dream on Friday night. The banks made these sub prime loans to people who could never afford a mortgage. Then President Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, my Congressman Tim Bishop, Senator Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and a bunch of other politcians showed up. They went into my wallet and made me and other taxpayers pay the banks back for the subprime loans that they gave out.. Did anyone else have this dream? Thank God nothing like that could never actually happen in the American capitalist system.

Bank, bailouts, extortion and the Senate

Well Wall Street and the banks seem to be using extortion to try and get Congress to have U.S. taxpayers buy up their crap sub prime loans. In the Senate it looks like their lobbyists may have succeeded in getting dumbocrats like Chris Dodd to railroad this through. Meanwhile the banks are using extortion to make the situation worse. By tightening credit the are making the situation worse on purpose/ Nobody is actually asking the question that these banks can not keep up this extortion for long because they are in business to lend money. That's why they are trying to rush Congress to pass this bailout bill before people realize the game they are playing. If they get away with it it will be the biggest rip off the U.S. taxpayers.

Bailout failure: They call it Democracy!

"A bipartisan rebellion in the House killed a $700 billion rescue plan for the nation's financial system yesterday, "- Washington Post

Funny how the Post like some of the polititans in Washington is calling this a "rescue" when the American people overwelmingly know this is a bailout of the idiots of Wall Street. Speaking of idiots. How about that Nancy Pelosi? here are some of the money quotes:

"The Democratic side more than lived up to its side of the bargain," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "

Bargain my ass! Creating legislation to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money is not a bargain this was a bailout of Wall Street. The American people know it and they let their representatives know it in know uncertain terms.


"What happened today cannot stand," Pelosi said. "We must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that message."


What can not stand ,Nancy? The will of the American people? Who flooded the offices of their Representatives with calls that this plan sucked? They call it Democracy for better or worse you and everyone else in Washington had better remember that!

BAILOUT: Hola suckers!

Nancy Pelosi said "The Party is over." but, for some the party has just begun. Nowhere in this trillion dollar bailout bill do I see that those sub prime homeowners who will be helped and bailout along with the banks have to prove that they are in this country illegally. Michelle Malkin

pulls back the curtain to show the 800 pound Gorilla sitting in the room where this bailout scam was negotiated here are the money quotes that will cost the American taxpayers:

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the
foreclosure wave – Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire,
Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, for starters — also happen
to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the
mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers
with the shadiest credit histories.

I’ve reported on the rapidly expanding illegal alien home loan racket.
The top banks clamoring for their handouts as their profits plummet, led by
Wachovia and Bank of America, launched aggressive campaigns to woo illegal alien homebuyers. The quasi-governmental Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority jumped in to guarantee home loans to illegal immigrants.

The Washington Post noted, almost as an afterthought in a 2005 report:
“Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing major ethnic or racial group, have been
courted aggressively by real estate agents, mortgage brokers and programs for
first-time buyers that offer help with closing costs. Ads proclaim: “Sin
verificacion de ingresos ! Sin verificacion de documento !” — which loosely translates as, ‘Income tax forms are not required, nor are immigration papers.’”

Yes, Nancy Pelosi had it right "The Party is over. But, for groups like La Raza and the illegal immigrants and banks who have these sub prime loans the party has just begun. Meanwhile we American taxpayers are the ones who will be left to clean up the mess thanks to this bailout bill. Hola suckers!

Wall Street is selling it's sh$t! Guess who is buying it?

From today's Washington Post:

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration this morning said they
had struck an accord to insert the government deeply into the nation's financial
markets, agreeing to spend up to $700 billion to relieve Wall Street of troubled
assets backed by faltering home mortgages.

Yes Wall Street is selling it's sh$t and we tax payers are buying it! Hello suckers!

Full details of the plan were not immediately available.

That's because the devil was busy looking at it and try to find a way to climb into it.

There was at least one good piece of news the Republicans seemed to have been able to get the Democrats to drop their demand that suspect "social services" groups like A.C.O.R.N don't get hold of any taxpayer money since their record of corruption and voter registration fraud is one of the under reported scandals in this whole mess. Here is the money quote:

They also agreed not to dedicate a portion of any profits from the bailout
program to an affordable housing fund that Republicans claimed would primarily
assist social service organizations that support the Democratic Party, the
official said

Only time will tell how badly we taxpayers are being screwed by this legislation and those who negotiated it want this passed before the opening bell of Wall Street. So it looks like our time is up!

Bailout Barney Frank to the rescue! Of who?

As the saying goes "Fools rush in where wise men never go" so it was the Democrats and Bush administration officals like Henry Paulson who tried to rush this Wall Street bailout plan cooked up by the banks themselves through Congress this week. Now comes this irritating comment from Bailout Barney Frank in today's Washington Post:

"I am convinced that by Sunday we will have an agreement people will understand." -Barney Frank

Oh we understand Congressman Frank. We understand we taxpayers are about to be screwed by a bailout orchestrated by the banks and financial institutions like Bank of America to save their butts because of the bad sub prime loans THEY made.

No Boo Hoos for WAMU!

As the Washington Post reports:

"Federal regulators last night seized the massive, troubled mortgage lender Washington Mutual in the largest bank failure in U.S. history,"

J.P. Morgan submitted the highest bid in an auction regulators held Wednesday night, buying Washington Mutual's 2,200 branches, its $135 billion in remaining deposits -- and its vast portfolio of troubled investments in mortgage-related securities.

My my how could this have happened? As Diggers Realm reported a while ago here is an example of the kind of sub prime mortgage that Washington Mutual gave out:

"Soledad Aviles, an immigrant from Mexico with a 6th grade education who can't read or write English and makes $9 an hour, was approved for a mortgage of $615, 000 by Washington Mutual. It should be noted off the bat that Washington Mutual is one of many banks that accept the Matricula Consular ID card as proof of identity and which is easily forgable."

"Referred to a local loan broker by a trusted friend, he borrowed the entire purchase price of $615,000 from Washington Mutual at a high interest rate typical of sub-prime loans. The monthly payment, as he says he understood it, would be $3,600 -- steep for a glass cutter who made $9 an hour"-

Gee, What could go wrong here? Meanwhile Congress and the mainstream media continues to ignore exactly who these banks like Washington Mutual were giving mortgages to and why we should not be surprised how things turned out and why these banks deserve to fail and not a penny of taxpayers money should be spent to save them.

BAILOUT: The fix was in...

This BCP post from February is going into the I told you so file. All the hoopla about the administration officials coming up with this plan to buy up the toxic mortgages and bad sub prime debt and make us U.S. taxpayers pay for it is a bunch of B.S. The fix was in many months ago as I correctly predicted in February. It always seemed curious to me why the Bank of America would buy a failed mortgage broker like Countrywide with all it's bad sub prime debt. The answer is now clear Bank of America had a plan to unload that bad debt from the Countrywide purchase on us taxpayers from the begining. With the recently announced plan to have the government spend 700 billion dollars to purchase these subprime loans it looks like they succeeded. Here is exhibit A from my Post in February 2008:



"Bank of America, which is in the process of acquiring Countrywide Financial and has potentially huge exposure, has circulated a proposal to create a new federal agency that would buy vast quantities of delinquent mortgages at a deep discount and replace them with fixed-rate federally guaranteed loans."-New York Times 2/2008



That sounds very similar to what is being railroaded in in Washington this week. Just remember I told you so.

Stupid money and the common sense of mainstreet.

The Washington Post had an article today that looked at the feelings of some people in suburban main street communities who like me are not in foreclosure, who lived with in their means and did not borrow more money than they could afford when they bought their homes. Here are the money quotes:



"Ed Merkle, 58, as he pointed to the "for sale" signs lining his street.
But Merkle, a defense contractor, said he has lived within his means in an era of easy credit. He didn't take on a huge loan even when his bank encouraged him to dream bigger.
"I've been financially responsible with my own money. Why should I now be responsible for the fact that you were not?" he said. "



""If I spent more money than I have, I don't deserve to have somebody bail me out," said John Owens,"



"This may be a Main Street bailout backlash in the making. The details of the financial crisis are still hard for most people to follow -- what with talk of exotic "derivatives" known as "credit-default swaps" and so on -- but the central fact of the matter hasn't been lost on anyone in this Northern Virginia community: The taxpayers are on the hook for the bad judgment of others. "



Backlash indeed! I say bring it on and take it to Washington and Wall Street.

I woke up this morning and...

I woke up this morning and found this note on my pillow.

Somehow I don't think this is good news.

Monday Morning do you know where your money is?

News today that Bank of America is going to buy Merrill Lynch both were participants in the sub prime mortgage meltdown that we tax payers are now paying for. How did this thing start? Bob can explain it.

Socialism comes to Wisconsin Ave.

So much for the Republican idea of free markets. Now that the Bush administration is using our taxpayer dollars to bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mainstream media refuses to look any deeper than the headlines to find out how this happened. This has all the look of a problem that is attempting to be swept under the rug. Here are some of the money quotes:

"There is no guarantee that the takeover will work, and it comes at a potentially massive cost to taxpayers. The government has pledged to inject money in the companies in any quarter in which they would otherwise be insolvent -- up to $100 billion in total for each company. "

How nice! No guarantee that after spending up to 200 billion that this may not work. If somebody in congress proposed such legislation would Bush sign it?

"Paulson also announced a separate program in which the government will start buying securities backed by mortgages -- $5 billion worth, initially. That will, in effect, subsidize the purchase of homes by lowering the interest rate that buyers must pay for a mortgage."

Why do we taxpayers have to be the only ones to buy these mortgage backed securities? Paulson should have made all those banks and institutions who gave out the loans to unqualified home buyers and illegal immigrants and then bundled them into securities be required to buy these mortgage backed securities on a 50 50 basis. Why not they caused this problem in the first place they need to share the pain of the recovery not just us taxpayers.

U.S. Taxpayers about to get smacked in the Fannie Mae

I traveled from St. Paul to Washington on Friday and opened the paper Saturday to bad news. It had all the earmarks of a taking out the trash news release. News that the U.S. Government aka the U.S. taxpayers were going to take over and bailout the two quasi private mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is real bad news that's why it is in the Saturday papers and on a day when a tropical storm was heading up the east coast. Hold on to your wallets as once again more money is flowing out to bailout people like illegal immigrants and others who should not have gotten a mortgage but, should not have been in this country in the first place.
Here are some of the money quotes:

"For years, they played high-profile roles in the political and civic life of Washington, hiring armies of lobbyists to help protect their unique status and, through foundations, giving vast amounts of money to charities large and small. That began changing with a series of accounting scandals beginning in 2003. The housing crisis raised more questions about their structure and operations."

Were was the in depth reporting of the mainstream press when this was going on? Following the antics of Britney Spears no doubt!

"It's a case where market psychology became more important than the fundamentals, and that's why they had to act," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee"

Huh? Fundamentals are good but, investors are scared so let the taxpayers pay billions to make sure these "investors" sleep well tonight but taxpayers will be paying for years. I smell something fishy going on.

The problemo Mr. Obama is....

"If the government can bail out investment banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to folks who are struggling on Main Street," Obama said

Nice words from Obama looking out for the "little people". The problem is Senator is that some of the people you are bailing out with U.S. taxpayer money may not be here legally and that is a sub prime problemo.

Anatomy of a sub prime problemo.

The Washington Post has an article that belongs in the "Hola suckers" file concerning the sub prime loan debacle that we responsible citizens will be paying for. As is usual in liberal mainstream media papers like the Washington Post no mention is made about the legal status of some those involved. Use your own editorial judgment because you can't rely of those of the Washington Post. Still the article shows the problem that all of the rest of us RESPONSIBLE citizens will be paying for. Here are some of the money quotes:

"Looking back, Glenda Ortiz can see she did everything wrong when she bought her house in 2005."

Duh! When you do everything wrong. Guess what happens?

"Ortiz, who speaks little English, said she didn't know much about the U.S. banking system. So when a Mary Kay saleswoman, Maria Esperanza Salgado, came to her door and said she could help her buy a house, Ortiz said, she believed her."

What could go wrong here? Ortiz has lived in the U.S. for nine years and speaks little English? Perhaps if she spent a little less time watching Spanish language Novellas on TV she might have been able to read some of the documents she signed.

Exhibit A:
"She signed papers in English that she didn't understand. One said she was married to a man she didn't know. "

Uh huh. Well this must be a new law that I am not aware of.

"Erick Gutierrez, housing director for the Washington-based Latino Economic Development Corp., said is all too familiar. Gutierrez blames the government for allowing so many sub prime loans, such as Ortiz's, which required no proof of income."

Oh yeah, I blame the government too! But, unlike Mr. Gutierrez I blame the government for not making sure that some of the people getting these loans are supposed to be in this country in the first place. Of course there is no mention of this in the article.

"According to the Center for Responsible Lending, 40 percent of loans to Latinos are subprime, and it projects that one out of five of these loans made in 2005 and 2006 will go into foreclosure."

Of course not all of these loans to Latinos where being made to illegals but, no one in the mainstream media or our government seems to be asking the question of how many of these sub prime loans were given to people who should not have been here in the first place. But, we responsible U.S. citizens should be demanding that they do! After all we are paying for this debacle.

"She said she had become so depressed about losing her home that she stopped working for more than a year."

Hmmm stopped working for a year? I wish I could do that. How did she survive? Oh but, she has somehow managed to scrape together enough money to hire another lawyer. Hola suckers!