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Tag: Paulson (page 1 of 1)

November 12, 2008

Paulson Translated

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

After listening to and reading the text from Paulson’s speech this morning, I had to sit down and translate it because there was so much he wasn’t saying and so much that he was saying that was just not “right.”   I hope that you’ll do two things:

  1. Take the time to read the entire thing.
  2. Make your opinions known – tell me if you think I’m all wet.  Talk to others about it, write your local paper, forward a copy of this to others, call your congressman.   Don’t just sit back and say, “I don’t like it.”

Here goes:

Paulson Translated – His original speech is in “normal” type, my comments are in bold.

Washington, DC — Good morning. I will provide an update on the state of the financial system, our economy, and our strategy for continued implementation of the financial rescue package. Keep in mind that this strategy is subject to change by tonight.

Current State of Global Financial System

The actions taken by Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC in October have clearly helped stabilize our financial system. Before we acted, we were at a tipping point. Credit markets were largely frozen, denying financial institutions, businesses and consumers access to vital funding and credit. He uses past tense verbs, but I’m not sure that isn’t still true. U.S. and European financial institutions were under extreme pressure, and investor confidence in our system was dangerously low.

We also acted quickly and in coordination with colleagues We told them who we were going to buy and we all slashed rates together around the world to stabilize the global financial system. Going into the Annual IMF/World Bank meetings in early October, I made clear that we would use the financial rescue package granted by Congress to purchase equity directly from financial institutions – the fastest and most productive means of using our new authorities to stabilize our financial system. Even though that really isn’t what the program was for. We launched our capital purchase program the following week when we announced that nine of the largest U.S. financial institutions, holding approximately 55 percent of Read more

September 29, 2008

An Update on the Bailout….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

and yes, after doing some more reading on it, I do still consider it a bailout.

I’m going to put a copy of a post that Yves at Naked Capitalism wrote in italics and then my comments will be interspersed in bold print and then I’ve got more thoughts at the end.

Hope this helps you understand it better.

Congressional Charade: Changes in Bailout Bill Cosmetic, and Everyone Knows That

For a quick, one-stop synopsis of the Mother of All Bailouts (as of this month), see this readable version at Clusterstock (we’ve become a recent convert to this site).

Reader and sometimes contributor Lune, who was once a Congressional staffer and still subscribes to the the inside-the-Beltway press, provided a wrap of their coverage of the bailout bill. It makes clear that everyone understands that turning Hank Paulson’s three pager into a 110 page draft made for a nice fig leaf but made virtually no substantive difference.

Gee, why doesn’t that surprise me.   They added 107 pages of rules and regulations and it’s basically just spelling out the same difference as before.

From Lune:

Well folks, we’re almost to a done deal (certainly closer than Thursday). The Hill papers are reporting that they’re getting closer in both the Senate and the House to the needed votes to pass the new bailout bill. Roll Call gives the most frank assessment of what happened over the weekend in an article entitled “Same Bailout, New Dynamic” (subtitle: Outrage Prompts Sales Effort).

All the late-night talks, last-minute demands and dramatic pronouncements aside, the fundamental structure of a $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan that Congress spent the weekend wrangling over has not changed significantly from the outline proposed by a bipartisan group of Senators and House Members last Thursday.

Did you hear that?:  It’s basically the same deal as last week Thursday, just spun differently.

“This is in essence the same,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who attended those talks.
. . .
Assuming enough House Republicans agree to vote for the package, it appeared that the House could vote as early as today, while the Senate might have to wait to take it up Wednesday after Rosh Read more

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