BofA/Coutrywide wrote the Dodd-Shelby Bailout

I am simply copy-pasting Mr Mortgage's post here, as the news must get out there and what is happening in this non-democracy that is the US is just outrageous:

This $300 billion Dodd-Shelby bailout is an absolute crime. It bails out the banks by limiting their loss to 10%; a joke since many of the problem areas like CA are down as much as 30% already on the median in the past 12-months and the rate of acceleration of the price declines are picking up steam. The subprime crisis is nearly over and now Prime, Alt-A, Pay Option ARMs and Home Equity Lines/Loans are failing. If they get this $300 billion passed, another $1 trillion+ will have to come on its heels for all of the other bailouts.

This needs to be fought and/or vetoed or it’s potentially $300 billion of taxpayer money down the toilet. Bernanke already cost global citizens enough by ratcheting down rates the most in the shortest amount of time in history, sparking a massive inflation wave in order to save the very investment banks who started all of this in the first place. Now, unless we all do something and get this story out there, another $300 billion will go up in smoke.

The National Review Online has obtained an internal 64 page document on Bank of America letterhead dated March 11th that matches the Dodd-Shelby Bill almost identically.

First, we find out that Dodd is a Countrywide “insider” who claimed ignorance over being given special considerations saving him $75k over the life of his loan and is so ignorant he didn’t read his loan papers. Now, we find out that BofA, who is supposed to be closing on their Countrywide purchase in the next few months, wrote the Bill for him.
If this Bill passes, BofA’s Countrywide buyout is much more palatable and the $60+ billion in toxic loans are mostly covered by the taxpayers. This stinks to high-heaven. its no wonder why BofA is so comfortable closing the CFC deal, which with will cost them at least $40 billion when considering the value of theie toxic assets (loans) vs massive debt.

And, wait a sec, there is more and worse !!!

This just in, found by a TickerForum memeber… www.FreedomWorks.org says that “Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and all Credit Card companies to Report Transactions to the Government”.

“Washington, DC - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd’s 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill’s managers without debate this week, would require the nation’s payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: “This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America’s small businesses are breathtaking.”

Please read the original post for more info and also spread the word.

Today was a great day for Free Software

Slashdot reports that Wine 1.0 has been released, after 14 years in the making. After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix.

It's also the Firefox Download Day, where the Mozilla Corporation is trying to set a world record of downloads for the release of Firefox 3.0 (also today). Download it now.

Data on Housing Relief Questioned

David Cho and Renae Merle, Washington Post Staff Writers, report that:

Banks and mortgage firms are providing questionable information about the number of subprime mortgage borrowers they are helping and the rate at which homeowners are falling into foreclosure, according to the top regulator for the nation's largest banks.

Those details are crucial for regulators to gauge the severity of the housing crisis and evaluate the effectiveness of the steps lenders are taking to address the problems.

(hat tip Tanta@CalculatedRisk)

Nothing has changed since 1929

I am by no mean an expert in the 1929 krach — it seems like B. Bernanke is — but I was nonetheless impressed by the similarities of what happened in 1929 and what is happening in 2007-2008 as the quotes below, from Peter Bernstein's book, the Power of Gold, show:

In the early days after the crash of 1929, Andrew Mellon — then Secretary of Treasury and one of the wealthiest men in the United States — gave the following advice to President Hoover: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... purge the rottenness out of the system". At about the same time, Russell Leffingwell of Morgan offered his prescription for how to get the economy out of depression: "The remedy is for people to stop watching the ticker, listening to the radio, drinking bootleg gin, and dancing to jazz... and return to the old economics and prosperity based upon saving and working"

Hmmm... Any resemblance with what is happening today?
It also looks like Andrew Mellon was quite a knowledgeable and realistic person, not like this useless puppet who is Secretary of Treasury today.

There were a few brave souls who were convinced that it was the entire economic system that suffered from the looming maladjustments, not the morals of the players in the stock market. [...] They sought means to reliquify the tottering banking system and somehow put money into people's pockets so they would be both willing and able to go out and spend it.

Hmmm... Any resemblance with what is happening today?

Finally:

[...] 1930 in retrospect looks in many ways like the calm before the storm. On March 7, President Hoover reported that "All the evidence indicates that the worst effects of the Crash upon unemployment will have passed during the next 60 days." [...] The domino effect of a major crisis would not make itself felt until the end of 1930, first with the failure of Caldwell & Co., a bank in Tennessee. [...]. Some 2300 banks would follow suit over the next few months.

So, conclusion: turn on your brain, turn off BubbleTV, and think for yourself: Are we really over with the credit crisis? Is the Dow in its way breach the 15,000 or 20,000 points by year end?

Bush impeachment resolution

A piece of news not enough heard of today. This is weird...

So who is the most dangerous man on the planet?

Google News on Bush impeachment

The list of all the dirty deeds of this single man is very long, but I nonetheless recommend reading the full text of the impeachment resolution here to get a full view of who has been leading the US for the past 8 years, and where.

"Wildly Creative" employment report in the US [updated]

I am happy to see that I am not the only one to consider the figures coming out of the BLS as total rubish and see that actually quite few people seem to be concerned about the way employment figures are calculated by the BLS in the US.

I will just relay Mish's posts here. On the 5th of June 2008, he wrote:

Friday we get to see how creative the folks at the BLS get with their birth/death model. Whatever it is, the mainstream media is likely to put lipstick on a pig.

And we got the confirmation on the 6th of June's employment report, and Mish's comment:

Once again the BLS should be embarrassed to report this data. Its model suggests that there was 42,000 jobs coming from new construction businesses, 23,000 jobs coming from professional services, and a whopping 217,000 jobs in total coming from net new business creation. The economy has slowed to a standstill and the BLS model still has the economy expanding quite rapidly.
[...]
This report was the 6th consecutive disaster, and 5th consecutive contraction. Service jobs were only positive because 17,000 useless government jobs were created. Somehow we are supposed to believe the economy is not in recession.

For those unfamiliar with the way the BLS "counts" the number of unemployed people, and their death/birth model, you will learn a great bunch of things from Mish's post.


Here are some more figures, as found in "Employment Situation Worsening" by Anthony Cherniawski, The Practical Investor, LLC | June 9, 2008:

The CES Birth/Death Model added 217,000 hypothetical jobs in May, so the real number may have been –266,000 in May instead of the –49,000 enumerated by the BLS. According to the government statistics, we added 77,000 hypothetical leisure & Hospitality jobs and 42,000 hypothetical Construction jobs in the month of May. At the same time, those marginally attached to the workforce (seeking full-time work, but only employed part-time) increased in May.

In summary, the U.S. lost jobs for a fifth month and the unemployment rate rose by the most in more than two decades, as an influx of students into the workforce drove the biggest jump in teenage joblessness since at least 1948.