It’s a shame, I really wanted to see how much each institution got in bailout money so we could compare it to the bonuses they pay out over the same year.
Remember the Goldman Sachs story last year? They paid out more in salary and bonuses than the bailout they recieved (2bil more, if memory serves).
They’re just looting the Treasury.
It no doubt detracts from the ideological aspects of your complaint, but the Central Bank lending facilities are not part of your Treasury Bailout law. They are separate liquidity facilities, financed from the Central Bank.
I rather think that Mr Frank is right with respect to supporting the Fed’s reticence in publishing data on the draw on these liquidity facilities (that are intended to supplement / replace inter-bank lending). The ECB and BoE have, as I recall, been somewhat equally chary about disclosing too much with respect to these liquidity windows since they have been historically rather stigmatised, the fear being banks will not go to the liquidity window until “too late”…
Perhaps they are wrong (although the somewhat self serving commentary in Bloomberg from hedge funds looking to profit from added market leverage does not convince me), but evidently this is not some “Evil Bush Plot” as such, but a common concern shared with other central banks - without doubt why Mr Frank is agreeing with them.
It is said to see so much wilful ignorance and confusion with respect to the financial markets rescue (which seems to have worked quite well in heading off a real panic).
I’m a bank, and so’s my wife!
I am glad someone likes the results. The money gurus are still in a desperate state. The market keeps dropping and country after country is bailing out in panic. A large part of our finances is confidence. It is dropping . People are not spending and xmas will ba a disaster. Two more bank failures last week. GM about to go under. Oh yeh, the guys who caused it all are playing with trillions in tax payer money.
I suppose given your history this is an exercise in futility but:
(i) the stock market is not the financial system and vice versa. The real crux of problems is not in capital markets (stock market) but in credit - banks. Not the same thing.
(ii) There are good data showing the credit markets, after the interventions in the UK, by EU members, and the US have stabilized and are moving away from panic. LIBOR spreads are decreasing, interbank lending has picked up, etc. Versus the situation only a month ago, this is a big improvement. Not over yet, but at least the panic spiral seems to be broken, for the moment…
(iii) The global economy is going to go into a recession no matter what. There are no magic wands to wave that away. Ergo the markets will continue to decline. The test of the policy is if you avoid financial collapse and depression.
(iv) American consumers are and have long been massively over extended. Party over. Nothing is going to change that.
(v) The trillions are Central Bank dollars, not your Treasury money - that is not out of your General Fund or taxpayer receipts, but off of the Central Bank balance sheet. Insofar as the Central Bank has long been profitable, for the time being I do not believe it has had to call on your Treasury for taxpayer money to finance these operations - which are extensions of its normal and daily role in lending money to banks. The only difference between the normal operations and this (and the huge actual risk) is the allowance for wider ranges of collateral against which it is lending. Of course that opens up risk that if a major bank goes bust, the Central Bank may be exposed to massive losses and perhaps require itself recapitalisation. As I said in GD, if another of your major banks goes down and is utterly wiped out, you’ve got rather bigger worries.
You’re confusing, in any event, the US Treasury bailout with the Cen Bank operations. The US Treasury plan is indeed taking your taxpayer money and playing with it - it is also brand new policy. The Federal Reserve lending windows are an utterly different beast, and have always been lending billions.
It would be helpful to distinguish intelligently between your objects of knee jerk outrage, both in plans and for the recipients. Wall Street =/= Banking Sector and vice versa.
This is NOT a good thing. The problem is not the credit crunch. The crunch is the solution to the fact that so many people have been living off of credit, and can’t pay back what they owe. I’m with Peter Schiff on this one. The bailout of the banks and the credit card companies and the auto industry and everyone else who will be attempting to suckle at the governmental teat can only do one thing; stave off the inevitable collapse of the stock market and the U.S. currency.
According to wikipedia, Peter Schiff is a big Ron Paul economic adviser. His father was tax protester Irwin Schiff.
Here’s a funny article.
Schiff said there would be $200/ bbl oil in 2002. He will eventually be correct, but it has happened yet and oil has now dropped below $100. He’s a gold bug, and was purchasing all kinds of stocks in May of this year, especially Asian shares.
Asian share have fallen more than US shares this year.
He didn’t think that commodities were overvalued in May(commodity prices have fallen), yet he also said that we would have falling US stocks (though, again, he liked foreign stocks) a plunging dollar (the dollar has strengthened) and civil unrest (hasn’t happened).
In fact, what will happen to the US will be worse than the Great Depression. OMG!!!
Ok, so he was wrong. My problem is that his forecast was incoherent. If the US was going to circle the drain, I find it hard to imagine that things would be hunky dory abroad.
Peter Schiff is a scare-monger. Sometimes he is correct, but only in the sense that a broken clock is accurate twice a day.
wmfellows, this is the Pit. Take your facts elsewhere, please. 
While I agree with you in principle - that everything will be alright - I also understand and agree with the outrage over the lack of transparency in the US response to the crisis. Even if we aren’t just handing over billions of unsecured dollars - and it’s not clear that we aren’t - to overpaid incompetents, allowing the public to believe we are is horrible policy.
Not necessarily. Look up “Capture Economics” in any decent econ/political text.
What pray tell is the relevance of this vague comment? Banking is not the same as Wall Street, as it is typically meant, meaning the NY City investment and money centre banks. Period. The majority of American banks are not Wall Street I Banks, the majority of credit is not made via said banks.
So what is your point (I should think you actually do not have one)?