The Colbert Report: Bears & Balls
By Nicole Belle Tuesday Apr 01, 2008 11:50am
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Download | play (h/t Heather)
Stephen Colbert looks at the housing crisis and the suggested fix by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and tells us how to get bailed out:
Of course the big news has been the sub-prime mortgage crisis. As you may recall BearStearns went belly up when people who borrowed money to buy houses they couldn't afford failed to all win the lottery on the same day. So two weeks ago, the Fed extended a $30 billion line of credit to JPMorganChase to buy BearStearns out. Now, this bailout raised some hackles among the anti-business pro-people set....
First of all, if they're losing their house they're no longer home-owners. Okay? Problem solved. But for those who still hold a mortgage the solution is simple...[Button: sell your children]....no, no. [Button: rent your organs]...not yet. [Button: buy a bigger house]...exactly. Asking the government to care about your six-figure mortgage is like praying to Jesus to get rid of your love handles. They've got bigger problems. But sink ten billion dollars into that home and suddenly, that room full of solid gold toilets is a linchpin of the economy. Bingo. You get a bail out.
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April 2, 2008 7:23 AM EDT
Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the securities behind the $29 billion Federal Reserve loan to Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) is mainly comprised of "mortgage-backed securities and related hedge investments," said the Treasury Department.
Okeydokey
Oh people people people people people. When wilst we wake up?
Ya know LA...I don't know if they will...as long as they have their conveniences and teevee...the majority just don't give a damn about anything that isn't right in front of them...
With the writing of a letter Paulson can basically guarantee the 29 Billion dollar payback to the federal reserve for the junk they accepted as collateral from Bear. It is disturbing when an unelected twit from the dark side can do this so easily.
I mean you and I are awake...as are most of the regulars here, but that's not enough.
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 3:
I know. Ultimately that stuff isn't a sin, but what is being done to the country by the banker boyz is.
No, no, no...Sell your children's organs.
I don't understand finances so well, but I don't think any banks would give a second mortgage to people who were bankrupt due to their first mortgage. At least not any banks that wanted to stay in business.
Further, doesn't corporate welfare defy all the rules of "free market economy" that rethugs trot out when talking about pretty much an social program?
Nicole - you seem to have missed the tail of our discussion on the other thread:
re:126 Nicole:
” As to your recommendation to our upgrades, again, your concern is noted, but that is not a decision being made at your or my paygrade.
Whatever - with the C&L Mission clearly stated we wouldn’r be wasting time on any of this ..
as to jokes: you can read the Bible and the sleaze could drip, or, you can say the spiciest things, and they could be just witty.. It all depends on delivery. This particular item is not high class, nor witty, ever .. There were a LOT of complaints.
And: Wow …wooow .. wooooow.
How do you know what is my paygrade ?
Yet, Americans will still vote gop and for corporate welfare. Then they spew about personal responsiblity but always give their party a free pass for everything.
Since the start of this country, cons have always chose the establishment over the people.
Their history is amazing.
There is something in their minds that disconnect right from wrong.
Or of course upgrade your people skills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHUkyF632_U
Bears or Balls, they know the game in Manhattan and how to locate the TAXPAYER handouts - Stephen is not that much off..
Manhattan Apartment Prices Hit Record High
....
""So far, wealthy Wall Street executives and foreign buyers have stayed in the market, paying record prices in a range of buildings. The high average price of Manhattan apartments reflects the popularity of luxury condos. The average price of a co-op rose to $1.3 million in the first quarter of this year from $996,000 last year, and the average price of a condo rose to $1.9 million from $1.3 million during the same period ...
......
The huge price increase reflects the sale of an unusually large number of very expensive apartments, which skewed the average. In this year’s first quarter, 71 apartments sold for more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that range for all of 2007.
....................
The value of a co-op with four or more bedrooms rose an average of 86 percent this past quarter, to $12.9 million from $6.9 million the year before...""
AP - 11 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday a recession is possible and policymakers are "fighting against the wind" in trying to steady a shaky economy.
Well what does he expect when he is accepting worthless paper from these bank and investment houses as collateral and bailing them out with the ultimate guaranteer being the taxpayers?
L.A. Confidential @ 2:
Our short attention spans and desire for immediate gratification have been carefully cultivated for decades now. Anything short of a threat to our survival is unlikely to change our behavior. THAT was the big story of 9-11, not the islamofasciosphagettioterrorists.
L.A. Confidential @ 6:
Ummm...actually, I think both are sins...
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 15:
Sloth, and greed...in the top 7, I believe....
I'm no economist, but can someone tell me why it's okay to give JP Morgan Chase $30 billion dollars in taxpayer funded aid to bailout out the jerkweeds at Bear Stearns while the average joe, drowning in a mortgage he can't afford, gets nothing??!!
I guess "personal responsibility" only applies to the individual, not the corporation.
I've been asleep, politically, for far too long, but I still feel like I'm a lone voice out there.
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 16:
I think we've seen that framing ideas in a religious context is not likely to help bring about solutions, quite the opposite in fact.
johnnypunchclock @ 17:
Political entities have more care and concern for institutions and people that have greater political "equity". Our government has come to the point now where there is a direct correlation between financial means and this political equity.
In other words, they have money and power, we don't.
I think the solution for the bankster is to get someone from another country to live in the house at the expense of the rest of America, the foriegnors who come here get a free ride, cause they don't complain to the newspapers. The elite like non Americans better cause they don't want a bill of rights with that free house.
Coincidence? ...yes.
Basically the most guilty party - the CEO - gets off scot free with his $230 million retirement, his company gets obliterated, the people laid off, and to save the "free" market house of cards that is built on the adjusted rate mortgage and subprime loans aka the pyramid scheme, the FED uses taxpayer money to prop up this house of cards.
Because an economy, American and really, global economy, whose one pillar is a house of cards, needs all the propping it can get.
Oh, and Bear Stearns .....
According to Asia Times:
"So you can see how big commitments like this are dangerous, but Mr Evans-Pritchard ignores me and my penetrating, poignant analogy, and says that the problem at Bear Stearns was that through using "swaps", "swaptions", "caps", "collars", and "floors", they were able to float $13.4 trillion of this weird financial derivatives crap, and that "this heady edifice of newfangled instruments was built on an asset base of $80 billion at best". "
Per one of my readers, Greg Bacon:
$13,400 billion was what was leveraged on a measly $80 billion? Leveraged 167 times? Bear Stearns had less than 1% in the pot? Hahahaha!
Now, in a normal country, the CEO of Bear Stearns wuold be in jail, getting raped by Bubba the Mass Murderer. In the old Soviet Union, he would be shot while his family would be undergoing torture.
But this is the USA - bon voyage and happy retirement, Mr. James Cayne!! Enjoy your $230 million - you deserve it!
The Bear Stearns Story
Sorry for not including this link:
Asia Times article
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 16:
Hey, I think sloths are great! What did the sloths ever do to anyone? All they do is hang around in trees and eat leaves. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bradypus.jpg
Joking aside, I really don't think people grasp the scope of this situation. The Fed and the Government are going to make sure that we the taxpayers get the bill for these bailouts. That much is certain. The only question is: How much are we going to be stuck with in the long run.
L.A. Confidential @ 1:
Financial circle-jerk. When this really hits the fan, we'll be lucky to afford the pop-corn to eat while watching it.
Blue Lensman @ 18:
Yeah...good point blue...
Remember that the Federal Reserve is a private corporation too.
They just have monopoly control over the issuance of currency.
I like your blog AmericanGoy. This comment hits the nail on the head.
Even though that's from George Soros, it's true.
Woops, that was from Jim Rogers, not George Soros.
I'm willing to get into the government-backed rat rake securities!
Henry Paulson's plan is pretty scary, if you keep in mind that the Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express - just a cartel of private banks that have unconstitutionally usurped control over monetary policy from the US Government. Essentially, his plan is to eleminate all remaining organs of Government regulation of banks, lending institutions, investment house, Wallstreet, etc. and turn those functions over to the Federal Reserve. It would remove the last bit of influence that The People exert over the economy and would complete the de facto take over of the government by the banks, a process that was formally made possible by Woodrow Wilson when he signed legislation authorizing the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve is unregulated. The dog and pony show it puts on by appearing before Congress and confusing them with double talk on a regular basis does not constitute regulation. The Federal Reserve is a scam to print and distribute money(little pieces of paper with nothing behind them), lend that money to the government, and charge the government interest for the priviledge. The taxpayers, of course, pay that interest. The only beneficiaries of the arrangement are the banks. It's another privatization ripoff, clothed in lofty sounding rhetoric. Nothing more. The Fed is unregulated and now Henry Paulson wants to give this private, unregulated cartel control over all remaining governmental financial regulatory authority? This better be studied and be widely discussed, because it will only consolidate the trend to strip government from the hands of the people.
This is going to create a financial equivalent to the scam that is the Department of Homeland Security, which was created soley to facilitate turning the US into a police state.
Henry Paulson's is not good for the future of government of by and for the People.
And @ 8:
Why not? The bigger the mortgage the bigger the fees the broker makes.
Rake-wielding rats as a source of cheap labor is a great idea, but the nature of Capitalism being what it is, with it's never ending search for ever cheaper sources of labor, what will the rats do when their jobs are outsourced to rats in India and China? Why, we'll have thousands of unemployed rats! That would suck, in my opinion.
johnnypunchclock @ 17:
I'd like to know where all the dittoheads who hate the idea of National Healthcare because "they don't wanna pay no higher taxes!" are now. It's OK to bail out a corporation for years of bad business decisions to the tune of 10's of billions of dollars, but the people who were conned into taking these mortgages (aka working, tax-paying Americans) have to suck it up. Yeah, wait until the end of the year when the Wall Street Journal and CNN financial news start bragging about the "bonuses" that the CEO's of JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns get. The joke will be on Mr/Mrs Moron American.
Sometimes Stephen Colbert is hilarious. Other times, his brutal honesty stings so much that it's hard to laugh.
The needle is swinging toward the latter on this one with me.
I've never found Steve Colbert to be that funny. Sure - I get the satire, but his presentation is - I don't know - unfunny.
Jon Stewart has the gift of timing and self deprecation that makes his shtik far more entertaining - for me anyway.
Watching Colbert is too much like watching a pretend O'Reilly - and please don't point out the obvious regarding that observation.
L.A. Confidential @ 4:
Well, at least they are not going to help homeowners (the little guy). That would be socialism!
If you don't know about the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act [Bear Sterns is not a bank, and this is good and essential legislation gaining a lot of support , though not yet visibly at the inside-the beltway level.], you should take the time to learn. See if your state or city is on this list. (At the link, you can also choose to open a video of testimony by state representative Harold James on the HBPA.)
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