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BL forced by the powers that be to change the title in 3....2....1.....
Genius guest @10:53, Actually the US lost WAY WAY more people in the offensive on Germany - which never actually attacked the US directly. Some fuzzy thing to do with saving the free world and coming to the aid of your allies etc etc. Also, the US TILL DATE has troops stationed in Europe and Japan (60 years running) which were placed there to counter the Soviet threat. So dear hispter, I know you flunked through school and now eke out a living as an 'artist' somewhere in the village - washing dished for food occasionally. Please go back to you communist friends and try to charm them with you 'intelligence.' Thanks for playing 'douchebag of the day' though!
The true value is $2 + the value of JPM backstop for BSC for 12 months. There is not way that the numbers went down from ~ $20 at 5:30pm (as being reported) to $2 all of a sudden. Most probably they could not get to a price but with the feds pushing for a decision before Asia market open, JP bid $2 on the stock and agreed to provide 12 months worth of backstop. One you factor that in, I am sure that it is closer to the high teen range (at least as far as they think). Also, it has been reported that JP has some bid protection - so no one can come and bid $4 tomorrow. Also, once the structure comes out - I am sure that you will see some huge fee for JPM if the deal gets voted down. So I think the there is too much panic around. Bear DID NOT sell for $2. They effectively sold for more. Unfortunately that does nothing for the equity holders as of now. My money is on a re-bid from JPM after more due dilligence. This was the feds trying to prevent armageddon.
Anal_yst, CA can regulate what their pension fund is invested in. That is valid - boneheaded (to use a term in vogue with libs of late) and bad for the people whose money the fund managed, but valid and legal nonetheless. The the pension money is in effect the state's (yes, it belongs to individuals ultimately but the state runs the plan) and the state sets up and appoints the pension fund. So the state CAN regulate what the fund is invested in. All the same, if somone working in California has a 401k account with a Fidelity fund, then the state cannot (at least as of yet) dictate what that Fidelity fund is invested in. But more socialists like 4:21 on, I am sure very soon the state will also regulate that. And how much you can earn. And how much you should exercise in a day to stay healthy. And how much TV you can watch. And how much sex anyone can have (to create 'equality' so that we dont have some folks getting laid multiple times a day and some not getting any action in years). And.......
@12:37, what kind of wierd logic is that? Or more aptly, aren't we back to the logic behind 'separate but equal' in a roundabout way? So if you are a white guy running a small shop, all else being equal you will be at a disadvantage in getting small pieces of the deal because you are not black. That is not discriminatory? Also, just like big banks can dole out a small bit to some small guy as a favor, they can also NOT dole it out to some other small player because he might have pissed them off. But whereas you can never DENY anything to a someone for being black person, you are supposed to be ok favoring while black? Doesn't it work both ways? You can either discriminate as well as favor using some criteria (eg family connetion vs outsiders, school buddies vs others) or you cannot do either (race, gender etc). How retarded is it to argue otherwise?
Why is it that everytime they figure out that someone is paying less tax than the other, the solution is ALWAYS to equalize taxes for both at the HIGHER end? Wouldn't it be more logical if they increased the taxed for one and reduced it for the other to maintain revenue neutrality? Dont that have to come up with some concrete proposal for spending the extra dollars before they can grab those extra dollars? @4:34 says - "US taxpayer subsidizing the foreign governments investments." So if I do not come and take some money from you, am I 'subsidizing' you?
Ok I am confused. Is Random Banker being sarcastic or serious? Random Banker @ 10:04 "Is there really such a thing a government waste? I mean with money multiplier and all does it really matter if the government "wastes" money? The money is just reallocated throughout the economy." Are you seriously a banker? I mean 1) SO isn't that an argument for 100% taxation (is it?) 2) So everytime Bill Gates / Warren Buffet made some money - if the government took it away and 'wasted' it (gave it away to everyone equally) - would the end result be better than leaving the money with them? If paying $100,000 to a 100 random kids a better outcome than paying $10MM to hire Michael Jordon to a team? @10:10 - "Sending in more of our money to the government doesn't really serve those purposes. If we have a specific goal we want to accomplish we donate it to a PAC" Isn't that an argument AGAINST a tax hike (or ANY taxes at all)?
I find some of the sanctimonious outrage from a few of these debt issuers to be wierd. I mean dude - if the market is not buying your debt at even 20% then it means that you are that risk! Get your house in order - maybe people will then buy your stuff. . The analogy to this would be if tomorrow a bill was passed explicitly cutting off the agencied from any guarantee from the US govt. Their debt costs would soar. Their low cost is not a function of how well managed they are financially but of the implicit backstop even if they mess up.
I am sometimes confused with some liberal logic. On every issue, they claim that a certain set of people are 'gullible' - they get taken for a ride by mortage companies, drug companies - they cannot plan their retirement saving, they dont know keep themselves from eating unsaturated fat etc etc - and hence massive amounts of 'govt intervention and regulation' is required (govt expectedly run by a group of super-intelligent species just know better than the proles). So if these people are dumb, then why do they as well as the 'smart' ones get 1 vote each? Shouldn't the dumb ones get like 0.25 votes or something? After all - if these people get taken for a ride by 'everyone' and end up making the wrong choices, wont the politicians also do the same? Also, the whole point of all this whole regulation thing is to keep stupid people from making mistakes. So these same stupid people can also make mistakes while voting. They why do we not 'regulate' their voting too? Whenever I bring this up, liberals are up in arms shooting 'unequal representation' down as discriminatory. Which is when I point them back to the stuff above. Why then is controlling and regulating every other action of these supposedly 'stupid' people discriminatory? Never got any answers.
@1:56 said - "A more focused and engaged State Department could have prevented 9/11. " So what you are saying is that Gore lost the election in Nov, and then laden woke up and decided the America needs to be attacked. So over the next 8 months, he created the plan, put it into action, moved all his terror cells into the country, got the pilots trained and finally pulled it off. ALL in those 8 months. If only Bush had been more attentive. Here's a lesson. Remember the bombs in toothpaste and lotion plot that the Brits foiled a couple of years back? Guess how they did it? They did not all of a sudden hear 'noise' that an attack was imminent and started busting people. They were tracking these people RIGHT FROM THE START. When they realised that the plans were advancing, they came in and took them down. Guess who was in power when bin laden was thinking the whole thing up and setting up the sleeper terror cells? Guess again. Or wait a minute. Are you suggesting that the whole thing was bin laden's revenge for Bush 'stealing' the election from Gore. Oh my god.
Hey. The socialist haven't taken over as yet (thats what the 'Countdown' is for remember?) The banks better take the deal because once the takeover is done, he wont even be talking about splitting the companies. He will probably just cancel all the non-muni contracts!
Random Banker, girl and others, the argument you are building up against the wiretapping etc is fallacious becaue you are comparing an extreme outcome with a moderate outcome. The fact is the the terrorists (and other criminals) have and will continue to exploit the openness and privacy laws to their benefit to harm us. So it will always be a tradeoff between greater surveillance to keep us safe and safeguarding civil liberties. You extrapolate the current surveillance system which has trapped maybe a dozen characters (none of whom are particularly outstanding members of society) and maybe a couple of innocent people to a soceity where everyone is perenially bugged. But that extreme can only be compared to one in which everyone has bullet-proof privacy rights - no security cams anywhere, absolutely no random checks of any kind (of the kinds Amtrak is doing these days), no frisking, no x-ray machines, no convictions unless there is video proof of any crime in triplicate and the accused criminal doesn't voluntarily come in and confess, nothing. How will do you think will that work out? You say that is an unthinkable extreme but so is your hypothetical 'all phones bugged' scenario. And extremes can only be compared with extremes. So what is worse, all people bugged or all terrorists and criminals getting a free ride and thousands of innocents being killed? Not an easy choice is it? I am unsure so as to whether your arguments are naive or diabolical. Either ways, they are invalid. You have framed them in a completely incorrect way. If you so strongly feel about something, you might as well as frame it correctly!