government approves $700 billion bailout plan

[konechiwa 10+ year member]

I advise others what I do myself....dollar cost averaging. You put $10, $100 whatever in the market every period. If the market tanks, it means you buy more. If it rises, you buy less.
I have a feeling a signifcant portion of my retirement will come from the "extra" stock I got to buy during the down year of 2008.

what stocks do you look for when the market is in the tank?

is their a certain type of company i should be looking for?

 

[Liquid Bass 10+ year member]

what stocks do you look for when the market is in the tank?
is their a certain type of company i should be looking for?

gay ****. what else?

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

bump

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6782719

Bailed Out Bank of America Sponsors Super Bowl Fun Fest 

Morgan Stanley Hosts Conference at 5-Star Resort in Palm Beach

By BRIAN ROSS, MEGAN CHUCHMACH, ASA ESLOCKER and JOE RHEE

February 2, 2009

Despite a near collapse that required $45 billion in federal taxpayer bailout funds, Bank of America sponsored a five day carnival-like affair just outside the Super Bowl stadium this past week as President Obama decried wasteful spending on Wall St.

The event – known as the NFL Experience – was 850,000 square feet of sports games and interactive entertainment attractions for football fans and was blanketed in Bank of America logos and marketing calls to sign up for football-themed banking products.

The bank staunchly defended its sponsorship, saying it was a "business proposition" and part of its "growth strategy."

Critics blasted the spending as a serious abuse of taxpayer money.

"The prominent sponsorship of the Super Bowl says to the American people we'll take your money and then we're going to go waste it," Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, told ABC News.

Leading Congressional critic, Congressman Elijah Cummings, (D-MD), said, "They should know better, but obviously they don't."

According to the Bank of America, the official bank of the NFL, its NFL partnerships and product tie-tins "generate significant revenue streams." The bank said it was legally required to fulfill its contract to be an NFL sponsor and that its NFL product sales had already increased since the Experience began Jan. 24.

The bank refused to tell ABC News how much it is spending as an NFL corporate sponsor, but insiders have put the figure at close to $10 million. The NFL Experience was on top of that and was inked last summer, according to the bank.

The NFL said it was a "multi-million dollar" event and that it was also spending money to put on the event. A Super Bowl insider said the tents alone cost over $800,000.

Tickets were available for purchase for between $12.50 and $18.50, with proceeds from ticket sales going to local youth initiatives. It was the 18th year for the "interactive fan festival" and the first that Bank of America has sponsored it.

Bailout Dollars Shouldn't Go to Super Bowl Sponsorship, Critic Says

Schatz said that deal or no deal, the event sponsorship should have been abdicated once the bank took billions in bailout funds.

"The Super Bowl is a big deal, but it's a bigger deal that Bank of America is being bailed out by the America taxpayers," Schatz said. "This is an exceptional year and it's a time to say we're not going to do business as usual. We're going to say no, we're going to show some restraint, and we're going to cut back on something that really isn't absolutely necessary."

GM, another NFL corporate sponsor and bailout recipient, said it scaled back this year and didn't send any executives to the big game or schedule dealer meetings around it.

A GM spokesperson said that while the company was still providing a fleet of courtesy vehicles to the NFL for VIPs, only 200 were sent this year, down from 400 in 2008.

Another Bailed Out Wall St. Firm Gathers in Palm Beach

Earlier last week, Morgan Stanley, the bank that laid off 5,000 employees last year and took $10 billion in taxpayer bailout money, held a three-day conference for clients at the Breakers, a five-star oceanfront resort in Palm Beach, FL.

Morgan Stanley would not say what the elegant gathering cost, but said it is an annual tradition and that its clients paid their own travel costs and got a discounted room rate of $400 a night.

Congressman Cummings said that doesn't justify hosting such a lavish event when people on Main St. are struggling to make ends meet.

"For most people on my block, that would be half of a mortgage payment, a monthly mortgage payment," he said.

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html

Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz 

The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos

Last Updated: 8:29AM GMT 02 Feb 2009

Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.

"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.

"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.

Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.

"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."

Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.

Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.

Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.

 

[Enellz 10+ year member]

bump
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6782719

The government has to watch these banks more.

 

[psych0ticnemes1 5,000+ posts]

Thank you for the articles. Good info.

 

[John3000 10+ year member]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html

This is what should have happened, now you got banks blowing money with no documentation on what it goes toward. CEO's are gonna pocket/blow this money and when the systems fails they wont really give a shit b/c they will have left the business with out tax dollars saying it was spent within the company.

 

[DUMPED 10+ year member]

and the rich get richer once again.

only in America !

 

[tRidiot 10+ year member]

and the rich get richer once again.only in America !

Not fucking hardly.

 

[mrogowski 5,000+ posts]

Agreed, its happening all over. They should have let these firms collapse and rebuild themselves into more leaner corps. Instead, all governments are spoon feeding these bohemoths and all they are doing is operating like they always have (read spend! spend! spend!).

 

[Enellz 10+ year member]

(CNN) -- On Monday, House Republican leaders put out a list of what they call wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated:

The Senate is currently the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus bill.

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

Don't Miss

GOP senators draft stimulus alternative

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

I thought two were completly stupid...

 

[Banana Balls 5,000+ posts]

and the rich get richer once again.only in America !

That's how its supposed to work, dumb ***.

 

[528hz 10+ year member]

Can you say, "desensitization to corruption!"

Come'on people.

Why the fvck to you think the media keeps printing this sh!t? To get you ACCEPT the fact the corruption is the way politics & business operates. "Oh no big deal, that's JUST the way things ARE." "These banks should know better, but I guess they don't." Come the fvck on people!

The banks are in bed with the government and vice versa. Christ, the new Sec. of Treasury is ex-president of the New York Fed bank which was one of the main culprits that got us in to this whole "bailout mess."

You guys are fvcking stupid to be so gullible and naive.

Oh, and as a side note...there's a bill in the House RIGHT NOW you may want to take a peek at...just to get a glimpse of what's to come.

House bill H.R. 645.

Just as a pre-caution for when things REALLY go to sh!t. Be sure to stay calm, people.

 

[DUMPED 10+ year member]

That's how its supposed to work, dumb ***.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif:laugh:

of course it is..

sit back and let the idiots spend your tax payers money //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif:laugh:

then they'll just come back and ask for more.. and they'll be given it once again //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[528hz 10+ year member]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif:laughf course it is..

sit back and let the idiots spend your tax payers money //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif:laugh:

then they'll just come back and ask for more.. and they'll be given it once again //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

No shit!

Speaking of that, I just got a call from my accountant requesting my total for the stimulous check I recieved last year. That is taxable income this year guys, when they told us to begin with it wouldn't be.

If stimulous checks role out again, fvck that, I'm not taking it.

Taxing you on top of tax dollars. Can you say "fractional-reserve lending..."