Let Them Die
You said 700 BILLION?
An alien observing this whole financial mess from orbit would find it all very interesting.
I do as well, on one level. Fascinating stuff. Learning more and more about the innards of the US financial system.
On another level, it terrifies the crap out of me. Someone’s writing a check in MY name to the tune of $10k or so to cover this ($700 billion total)? WHAT?
I’ve got a kid on the way and am scrimping and saving. I turned off cable TV! Hell, I started drinking the crappy free coffee at work instead of buying good stuff, and starting bringing peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. I’m saving my ass off and some pin striped suit wearing sonofabitch is sticking his hands out to the tune of 700 BILLION DOLLARS?
Screw that noise, let them die! Let every bank fail; fuck ‘em. So my next mortgage will be drawn against a Chinese bank? Fine. They probably at least know what they’re doing better than the US bankers.
The Infamous Brad has a good point about when it will end… as of December 31, 2009, 97% of all of the teaser rate mortgages will have reset… so the dipshits who bought a house way bigger they could afford will have been foreclosed upon, and the banks holding those mortgage securities will stop seeing losses on them.
How Did We Get Here?
And as to how this all happened, I’ve not seen an explanation from the asshats on Wall Street and the SEC and the Fed. They just want our money.
However, the Good Math, Bad Math guy has a series of articles that sum it up pretty well:
Economic Disasters and Stupid Evil People
How it turned into a trillion dollar disaster
So that’s how we got here. Right now as I write this Congress is arguing about what in the hell to do about it. And for you partisans, just put a sock in it. Plenty of blame to go around for the deregulation to allow this… a Republican Congress got it signed by a Democratic President.
The Freakonomics guys have blogged a bit about this, too.
A guest blogger justifies the bailout of Bear Stearns and AIG. I guess I don’t have a huge problem with those. At least they let Lehman Brothers fail appropriately.
A response came saying Paulson is wrong about this… essentially it means that the profits are private (them Wall Street types were rolling in it the past decade), but when it comes time for the losses, somehow that gets socialized.
Or Else… What?
I’m a bit more concerned about this $700 billion dollar war chest they’re asking for. To my understanding, this is the issue:
- Credit is the lifeblood of the financial system.
- The system is chock full of bad mortgage-backed securities (see the Good Math Bad Math links above on this).
- Banks won’t lend to each other because they KNOW they all have bad debt and don’t believe they’ll get paid if they do give credit.
- FAIL
This is all very esoteric from my perspective. I’ve got car repair bills (my wife crashed her car). I’ve got a mortgage to pay (fixed rate, dammit!), and mouths to feed. I need to pay for gas, and food, and my health care costs just DOUBLED. I don’t give a flying fuck if UBS can’t get a loan from Citibank.
I want someone to tell me… WHY DO I CARE?
Why can’t we just wait for the dust to settle? Okay, for a while the credit market will dry up, many investors will be screwed over as stock drops… but then, after a while, the bad debt will be excised from the books, and we’re all good again, right?
It apparently would be pretty dire… but what would such a situation actually look like on the ground if we just allow the failing institutions to fail?
Isn’t that supposed to be how the free market works? If a bunch of idiots bet a bunch of money on stupid investments, they should LOSE THEIR MONEY, not take MINE.
So anyway, all of these articles say that the credit market has to stay liquid, OR ELSE.
Well, can someone please explain the "or else" part?
If not, then let’s please just let them die.
P.S.
Also, if anyone henceforth explains to me that they are an investment banker, derivatives broker, or Wall Street executive, I am going to put my foot so far up their ass that my t
oes are going to come out of their face. Then I’m going to drive off in their Mercedes.
Not that I didn’t hate this type of weasel before… but now there’s no jury in the country that would convict me for doing bodily harm!
P.P.S.
The above section is hyperbole, and is no way intended to actually constitute a threat, no matter how expensive the asshat’s suit.
Wow, congratulations from a fellow XS1100 enthusiast!
I was just poking around lamenting my current lack of a bike and I came across your blog. I live in Evanston, IL and it was cool to see familiar places in the pics from your trip. How long ago was your trip? Do you still ride? How will the baby effect your biking?
Best Wishes,
Ian
(ianwarsenault@gmail.com)
Fuckin’ A, brother!
Looking for some comic relief, I typed in JohnStewart.com and expected to find a few Daily Show videos to laugh along with.
Instead, I find your blog.
First, let me congratulate you for turning down all of those lucrative offers for your domain name. Obviously a man of principal – or just holding out for more?
Secondly, I appreciate a well written commentary on such an important topic, your well chosen quote and an excellent diety disclaimer.
If only the rest of the blogesphere were as well educated.
Keep up the good work, John Stewart
Congratulations to you both! Jane alerted me to the news. This is very exciting.
Everyone around me is having babies!! There must be something in the water.
Send my best wishes to Susanna as well!
Eiher the guy above me was being sarcastic or he really doesn’t know you…I kid yer pretty smart. I wonder if they let you out of GitMo early if you convert to Chris
+T
haha, thats funny cause I recieved an Obama ad in my ancient yahoo account, musta bought some pretty old list. Can’t figure it out though cause I’ve never voted for a democrat, and there’s no way in hell I’ll vote for this one. Not that I want McCain either.
Hahaha, he spoke at Sturgis and they played a clip on the radio. Is it just me or does he sound like Little Nicky(adam sandlers movie)?
Red and irritated, eh? You sure it’s not just the game?
Found via Google blog search; thanks for the call-out.
Let me put it this way: this is why you care. While Washington negotiated, we lost yet another bank yesterday, Washington Mutual. There are only two levels of safeguard left that prevented everybody with their checking and savings accounts in WaMu from losing everything yesterday, and we used up one of them. WaMu was put into a forced buy-out by JP Morgan Chase, a clear violation of anti-monopoly law we wouldn’t put up with if we weren’t desperate. How desperate were we? Had WaMu simply gone under, as it would have done today without this, 2/3rds of the entire reserve of the FDIC would have been gone. So if we lose two more banks that size, the American people lose their checking accounts and savings accounts. OK, more likely, the taxpayers end up on the hook for it, but we are at serious risk of a cascading bank failure.
Also, your employer depends on those banks being at least minimally healthy and able to operate. So does everybody’s employer. The last time we had anything resembling a wave of bank failures, unemployment roughly doubled. So take the number of friends and family you know are out of work? Roughly that many more of them will be out of work.
Yeah, it maters.
Congratulations John and Susanna! We’re extremely happy for you both!
Great looking boy. Glad everybody is okay and now the fun begins. lu
That kid’s head is like Sputnik!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmLGYSc0XQ&feature=related
I was wondering what was holding everything up. 33 hours!!! And then a c-section? Herregud!
Congrats!
Hey congratulations guys! Can’t wait to see you all.
Lor & Kell
Congratulations!! We will miss you at our game(s), but you are definitely needed elsewhere! Wow, sounds like a very healthy (future-frisbee playin’) boy!
Congratulations!
Congrats Guys, August looks very cute!
Wow, 33 hours! I certainly hope Amy doesn’t try to beat that record
-N8 and Amy and ???
Congratulations!! August is adorable!
Wow, I’ve been wondering how that all turned, then ding! check his site! Congrats on the cute kid! And hats off to wifey, thirty-three hours?! Man,i can relate to the towels in my butt but not for that long. Looks like a scholar to me!
Congrats! Very cute baby. Way to go guys!
drew
LoL!
Welcome to the world of parenting!
Grats, by the way, you 3! He is *adoreable* !!! I stalk your pictures now
~Crystal
In the case of Obama, the term African-American is neither imprecise nor inaccurate. In fact it’s one of the most precise applications of the term that I can think of…
Why is he African-American? Because his father was born in Kenya? Barack himself was born in Hawaii. That makes him an American-American, or just plain American.
His mother is from English descent. That makes him as much an English-American as African-American.
Yet why do you use this term to refer to him? BECAUSE OF SKIN COLOR.
So let’s use the right term. We’re talking about skin color; let’s call him black. I’m white. I may also be a Scottish-American, but it doesn’t say anything about the point at hand, which is a discussion of my skin color… THIS is why it is imprecise.
What about white people from South Africa? I saw an episode of Top Chef where a white woman, who had a parent from South Africa, describe herself (half-jokingly) that she was a very pale African-American. People GASPED as if this was some huge racist comment. It’s not and shouldn’t be perceived as such. We should stop giving reverence to a term which isn’t useful and was invented to dance around people’s perceived sentitivities.
Furthermore, on more general terms, “African-American” is in most cases an INACCURATE term (admittedly, it’s only half-inaccurate in Obama’s case).
In fact, I recall reading recently (can’t find it right now, so obviously this is not gospel) that genetic testing shows that a high percentage of those who self-identify as African-American actually have no African ancestry!
Should we call black people with no African blood African-American? How about we just use the more precise and more accurate term for what we REALLY mean… black! It’s not an epithet!
Not all Africans are black and not all black people are from African descent! Also, not all black people in America are actually American citizens.
Drilling further, if we want to get into the roots of human ancestry, we’re ALL descended from homo sapiens originating in the horn of Africa. Therefore, we’re all African-American in this country.
Does that make it a useless enough term?
Whoa, apparently I touched a nerve. I was just trying to be snarky.
But I stand by my point, that he is correctly called an African-American, in the sense that he’s a hybrid between an African and an American. I do agree that the term is all but meaningless in everyday use, and is just a polysyllabic way of saying black. Like my high school English teacher said, never use a 50 cent word when a nickel word will do.
Also, I’m not sure the term was “invented to dance around people’s perceived sensitivities.” I think it was adopted by black people as a way of describing themselves, in the 60s and 70s, presumably because the term black was becoming an epithet.
You’re right, Malcolm X first popularly used the term in the early 1960s, and it became more popular through the 1970s over the term Afro-American. Jesse Jackson further pushed for its adoption in the 1980s:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/African-American%23African-American-population
This about surveys of the black population on the term:
http://volokh.com/posts/1204569019.shtml
However, this from a black man on the subject:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_latimes-why_im_black.htm
It’s time to move on.
Great write up, I came over for your election thoughts, but this brought a tear to my eye. I think the birthing process is something you really can’t fully comprehend or appreciate until you’ve been through it. Congratulations.
Now, more importantly, when are you going to introduce him to the MSOP.
robert
awwww, now that is sweet! Is he sleeping or just being cute?
either that or u better start calling me Irish-american…and my ancestors were slaves too so I want my reperations from the British
Fuck yeah, that’s in Tulsa, baby! Those gold skyscrapers visible in the background at around 1:40 are part of Oral Roberts University. I could tell you exactly what coffee shop she stormed out of if I knew south Tulsa a little better (haven’t lived there in about 6 years).
ORU is pretty much Crazy Christian Central.
I have always insisted on calling white people of undetermined/mixed ancestry (including and especially myself) Euro-Americans. No matter how hard my relatives look for a darker, more ancient American ancestry and despite the fact that my people arrived in the early 1600’s, we still have an identity based from Colonial European culture, and anyway — why are mine the only people who are deprived of a hyphen?! The only (blank)-Americans are the tribes, and even they migrated from somewhere, but at least they did it first.
That said, “black” is more inaccurate than any geo-political designator. Most people are some shade of brown. But the WORST is calling people “non-whites”! If you’re going to be on a mission about language, blast any media source that uses that repulsive term. Hopefully soon, any mention of skin color will comply with the Crayola Appearance Descriptor System.
Hi
As a fresh johnstewart.com user i just want to say hi to everyone else who uses this forum
Aloha guys!
You have a very interesting forum.
So i’d like to know if someone of you or your frineds was fired because of a financial crisis?
LOL – Jeff felt exactly the same way until Marin was at least 9 months old. You’ll have to swap fatherhood stories when we get together. (Suz … shh … we’ll keep the fact that we’re right about the “going out” clothes between us.)
dude. you actually have a cute kid. who woulda thought!
Nice work.
You totally stole my name though.
I enjoy reading your posts on fatherhood. you funny guy.
You must get alot of trafic being the first google result for John Stewart!
First off, his name is Jon Stewart, not John Stewart.
Secondly, I’m nowhere near the first result for “John Stewart”. I’m curious what search strings you used to find this place.
Every time that dude does something (now, Cramer, previously, Crossfire), I get some response like this. I wonder how you find me!
You lucky bastard. Your boy is a gem.
you can try
john stewart is a badd ass name a name they only give to gods