Why do they need a bailout?

Because even though I’m a die-hard Mustang girl….

I want my new fucking camaro…!

Sweeeet!

The front of this car looks like it’s saying ‘fuck you’..

…and that beautiful ass looks like it’s saying “No really, Fuck you!”

Why else do we need to bail them out?

3 words….

American Muscle Baby….

But most of all?

Because of this…

the 725hp Super Snake Mustang….

Yes….. you read that right 725hp in a mustang….

The Automakers didn’t create cars we didn’t want. They didn’t force us to buy the Hummer,Escalade and Expedition and make them some of the most popular cars on the road while plunging conservative cars like the Chevy Cobalt into the crapper. That was us people. You and I. We’re Americans! Bigger,Badder, Faster is what we live by. People ask, “where is the market for this kind of gluttony?” The market is us. The big 3 wouldn’t have kept making them, Bigger,Badder and Faster if we didn’t buy them and demand more.

No, this wasn’t the Automaker’s fault. It was ours… And now that we’ve decided to go from “teen-age boy” to “old-woman” overnight… it’s our duty to give Ford,Chevy and GM some time to catch up.

Of course, using something  until we toss it like a worn-out old whore is also the American Way…But we can’t do that this time.

Because this…

can never die.

Any questions?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Detroit Steel
• “Imagine an America with no more Corvettes! No more Caddies, Trans Ams, Camaros or Mustangs.”
• STUDY: Detroit bankruptcy would cost four times more than bailout

When I was younger I went to my parents and I asked them to loan me some money. Ok, not really ‘loan’ I mean it was my parents.. so I guess it was more like I asked them to ‘gift’ me the money. I really needed help with my bills because I was being overwhelmed with them.I had fallen on some pretty hard times because of some pretty stupid decisions I’d made. But I knew that if I could just get my bills down to a ‘zero-due’ level I could climb out of the hole I put myself in. My parent don’t like just giving out money to people but they saw that I really was in trouble so they helped me out.

I took their money and went to Florida Power to pay my bill. By that time I was so far behind in my payments that that single payment alone was going to eat a large chunk out of the loan from my parents. As I was standing there in line I realized that I had another 2 weeks before that payment was technically due to be shut off. I knew I’d have the money to pay it in 2 weeks, so I left the line.

Water on the other hand..well they were coming out the next day, so I went to pay them. I didn’t pay the entire bill of course, I didn’t need to. I only needed to pay the minimum due to keep the water on. I did the same for cable and phone. I knew paying the whole bill was better but paying just minimum kept the service on and I could pay the rest in a couple of weeks no problem. I just needed this quick bailout. If I didn’t have the money in a couple of

weeks, well that wasn’t a problem either because I still had the rest of the money my parents gave me, which I was going to save for just this problem. Besides, it just didn’t seem right to pay all of these bills down to a ‘zero-due’ level anymore.

You know what I’m talking about. You have this giant wad of cash and there are so many things you could do with it that you don’t want to waste it all on paying the bills. Hell, doing that is like a crime or something.

A few days later a new movie was coming out and I had to see it! I couldn’t be told what the Matrix was, I had to see it to understand. It was a phenomenal, ground-breaking movie. It’s the movie that birthed CGI. After I had seen it I just couldn’t stop talking about it and some friends of mine wanted to go see it but they didn’t have the cash yet. So I treated them.

It really was a great movie.

My husband and I also went to an amazing restaurant right after that. I remember it was at the same time because the waiter looked just like Keanu Reeves and we were joking with him about blue pills and red pills. The restaurant was a little fancier than the ones we normally eat at but it was worth the $100 check.

Wow, talk about some great steak!

Two weeks went by and during that time we had bought a couple of new things, not things we would have bought with our own money. Since we had this extra money left over from my parents we figured, what the hell might as well buy it now. Nothing big mind you. $5 here, $25 there. We were saving that money to be used later just in case, even though we knew that in 2 weeks we’d have the money to pay all the bills down again.

Image by Nick Slide via Flickr

It was the third week after the ‘gift’ when the power was cut off and then the water and finally the cable.

When I went to get the money left over from my parents, it was all gone. That was a surprise, I mean I had this huge wad of cash that I didn’t totally spend on bills so I could save it for future bills and now it was gone…. I hadn’t even bought anything, so where the hell did it go?

When my mother came over later that day she was pissed that the power was off. She wanted to know what I did with the money she gave me to pay the power. I told her I had paid part of the bill and had saved the rest. She wanted to see all my bills then but I was a grown woman.. I don’t have to show my mother my bills. C’mon… it’s not like I was 12 and trying to hide my report card. She asked where the money was that I had saved and I told her that it was gone. Yeah, she didn’t like that too much either. My daughter was just a baby then and my mother couldn’t stand to see her living in a house with no power or water, I mean what could she do? Just leave her there like that to suffer? Sure I had made the mistake, but it’s not like she could punish the one under me because of my mistake. So she broke out her Discover card and paid the bills off and they were turned back on.

It was about a month later, my brother, who was in graduate school called my parents. He was having some finanicail aid problems and couldn’t make his rent or utilities payment that month. He didn’t want them to just give him the money, he had a decent loan plan laid out. See, he couldn’t work during the school year because he had to devote all his time to law school, so during the summers he would live with my parents and work 3 jobs in order to have enough money to get him through the school year. What had happened though was that his student loan hadn’t come in yet and the registrar wanted him to pay his tuition until it did. When it came in, the school would cut him a check and he’d get his money back.

The plan he laid out to my parents was decent, like I said. He could pay his tuition if they could pay

his rent and utilities. They didn’t have to give him the money, he would give them the account numbers and they could call and make the payments themselves. Then he would have the registrar put the check from the student loan in their name and mail it to them for payment. The whole loan would be in my parent’s control. They would oversee every aspect of it. The registrar had already been told of the plan and had already noted that the student aid would go directly to my parents when it came in and only my parents could change this.

What do you think they should have done in this situation? Wasn’t this a great deal? A deal that pretty much secured the return of their money? A deal that was much better than the one they gave me where I horded and wasted their gift and even needed a 2nd extra gift to pay for what the 1st one should have?

If they didn’t help my brother, is that fair? I mean, they can’t be expected to help everyone right? Where do they draw the line? Me, my brother? My aunt,grandmother… or cousin?

What if you were in a situation where you gave someone money to help pick themselves up, but they didn’t exactly do that. In fact, they kept most the money for themselves and squandered the rest on stuff you don’t know about because they won’t tell you. They squandered it even though they were desperately going to need that money and more in the very near future. But now, here is someone else with their hand out, but he’s got a lot more to lose and he’s got a much better plan. Almost an airtight plan. He may also need money in the future, but you know that you’ll atleast get this money back.

Pop quiz, hotshot. What do you do?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jacket Powers Gadgets With Your Hot Body [Gadgets]
• Father Dollar Bill Hands Out $15,000 in Downtown

Coming off a huge political map changing election, the first thing President Obama should do is walk into Nancy Pelosi’s office and demand that she, as the Speaker of the House, have a press conference and take blame for the mortgage failures that lead to the financial meltdown. No, he shouldn’t have Pelosi summoned to the Oval Office, he should walk himself into her lair. After he is finished making it clear to her who the democrat in charge really is, they both need to walk over to John Boehner office and demand the same thing.

In the spirit of true bi-partisanship it’s time for both sides to stop pointing the finger and just admit that they both screwed up. The Democrats wanted anyone and everyone to own a home so they helped to make the rules to buy homes a little bit weaker. The Republicans wanted less regulation and more money and saw an opportunity with the increased mortgages and opened the deregulated door to abuse. The only people that really care who opened which door are the guilty ones. The rest of us just want someone to stand up and fix the problem.

President Obama, coming to these 2 leaders instead of making them come to him sends a message. Coming off a massive election, he is the most powerful man in the world right now. With his massive wins not only with the popular vote, but the electoral college vote as well, he can get anything done at this moment. For him to walk over to Pelosi and Boehner puts the onus on them. His demands will either be met, or he will leave their office, hold a press conference explaining what he was doing and make sure that they are not elected when their terms are up.

Right now, in this country we don’t need to spend the time,money or effort on a bipartsian investigation that will conclude both parties are equally responsible. Let’s cut to the chase and get past the blame and onto fixing the damn problem.

With this new bipartisan love fest, all three can get together and find out just where in the hell $2 trillion went…

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Back when the country was deciding on that $700 billion bailout, there was another bailout going on that wasn’t really talked about. For the $700 billion one, the Troubled Asset Relief Program,TARP, Treasury Secretary Paulson and The Fed, Ben Bernanke, were screaming for transparency, oversight, and protection.

`We Need Transparency’

“We need oversight,” Paulson told lawmakers. “We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.”

They wanted it, they begged for it, they were asked who they loaned $2 Trillion dollars to and told the person asking …. no comment.

Wait…what?

The idea behind not telling anyone who received the money from the bailout we don’t know about is if people and other buisness’ knew, it will hurt the person or entity getting the loan. I guess government welfare isn’t just embarrassing to the poor.

The lack of transparency is also to keep corporate banking secrets within the corporation and not in the public where anyone can see it. I can understand that part. I guess we, John Q. Public, don’t really need to know who we’re loaning trillions of dollars to or what we can expect from them in the form of collateral and a return of the loan. But I would hope that someone would know.

Turns out, someone does so we don’t need to question it any longer.

In an interview Nov. 6, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said the Fed’s disclosure is sufficient and that the risk the central bank is taking on is appropriate in the current economic climate. Frank said he has discussed the program with Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a possible candidate to succeed Paulson as Treasury secretary.

“I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they’re OK,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that’s regrettable.” Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.

See, Barney Frank says that it’s all probably OK. He’s pretty sure The Fed priced the assets for the collateral accordingly, he’s pretty sure The Fed is giving it to worthy banks, and he’s pretty sure The Fed isn’t giving it to any ‘golden parachutes‘. Well, Ok he isn’t really sure about any of that because The Fed has refused to answer any questions on the $2 trillion subject, but if Barney says it’s probably safe, why do we need to question anything? Especially when there are more pressing question like what President Elect Obama’s policy for the missile shield will be, or who his chief of staff will be. Priorities man, Priorities. Shrouded in total secrecy is what the current administration has cultured and continues to grow, and it’s worked out swimmingly so far.

Besides, what’s there to worry about…Barney Frank said he’s pretty sure it’s ok.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Inside the White House Bailout Meeting
• Bailout: Who Knows Where the Money Goes?
• Federal Reserve refuses to identify recipients of $2 trillion
• Fed and S.E.C. Push for Tougher Bank Rules

UPDATE

It’s getting worse.

The original idea behind the bi-partsian $700 Billion bailout plan was for the Governement to step in and buy up some of the troubled assets that were hurting banks,thus damaging the market. That was the plan as we and Congree were told.

But that’s not what has been going on, even with the full transparancy. What I don’t understand, is why is noone saying anything about it?

This morning Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson addressed a skeptical press about the latest plans for those 700 billion dollars that were appropriated for the “TARP” — or Troubled Asset Recovery Program. Now Paulson says Treasury won’t buy those “Trouble Assets” — one of the many metamorphoses this program has had in its young life.

Wait..What? You asked for a blank check for $700 Billion. Said that it would be used to buy up troubled assets, even called the program the “TROUBLED ASSET RECOVERY PROGRAM”..but a few weeks later you decide you aren”t going to buy ‘troubled assets’ anymore.

They are buying bank stock, not troubled assets. We probably shouldn’t call it the TARP anymore. Instead, they are focused on a capital purchase plan (CPP) which is the widely reported $250 billion plan to use taxpayer money to purchase a stake in banks

If you’re sitting there reading this, you might be thinking exactly what I’m thinking and that’s
“What the Fuck?”

When did this happen? Who decided this?

The original CPP participants were told about the program at a closed-door meeting at Treasury and no minutes have been released on what was said during the meeting.

So, a secret,behind closed door meeting with no record of it every taking place. Now I know you are asking yourself the same thing I am.. “Is Dick Cheney a shape shifter?”

Is it a coincidence that there is all the secrecy with The Fed and the Treasury Secretary when over the last 8 years, we have seen the most secretive and powerful Vice President in history? I don’t think so.

All shape-shifter joking aside, this is getting pretty damn serious. We’re buying banks.

There is roughly $125 Billion left out of the $700 Bailout, that’s not being used for what it was named after and what it was promised for. There is another ‘open-door’ program going on behind the backs of everyone that has a tab of over $2 Trillion so far that we know. Both programs seem to working on the idea of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Neither the ‘out in the open’ TARP program nor the other ’secret-key-holders only’ program seems to have any oversight whatsoever.

The Big 3 auto companies are withering and dying and begging for a hand and are being told ‘Yeah, sorry guys but we’re not socialist, and you’re not a bank so it’s sink or swim for you.”

Folks, while we were all worrying about whether or not Barack was a socialist because he wanted to help poor kids have healthcare, while we were distracted by some ridiculous campaign rhetoric, the biggest ‘bait and switch’ in American history has been playing out.