Republican proposes Balanced Budget Amendment

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Corporate welfare? I hope you all know that the corporations that received TARP funds are paying it back.

Don't forget internet modems. We're one of the slowest countries internet-wise. Most places barely get 2Mbps broadband rather less actual advertised speeds.

They should not have gotten the funds in the first place. And long before the current economic upset, there was large scale subsidies granted to several corporations.

ruveyn

Had there been no TARP and the market failure was allow to pervade even more onto the middle and lower class, the American public probably would have wanted it. People protected from danger often conclude there are none.

I think it would have been better to reward those who didn't practice such bad behaviors and essentially promote those who had records of good behavior rather than letting the others stay open.

I was not referring exclusively, or even primarily, to TARP.

When a market failure pervades, everybody gets punished, including the innocent.

Some people say the $800 billion should have been divided up among the middle and working class, but the TARP (which was a loan rather than a spending package, unlike a stimulus) was meant to stop the market failure from pervading rather than stimulate the economy.

And when the market rebounds, those who were innocent and punished stay punished.

I would argue that some banks were forced by the Feds to take the money when they did not want or need the money.

Also find it interesting that in Obama's financial reform, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from it, when they caused the financial mess.

If you follow the actual money trail, it was Goldman Sachs that really facilitated the whole fraud.

Source please, though if what you're saying is true, I find it interesting that Obama associates himself with a lot of individuals from Goldman Sachs even for cabinet positions.

Right. The banks did not want the money. Oh please Brer Fox, don't throw me in the briar patch!

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 19 Jan 2011, 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Some of the banks forced to take the money did not want or need the money and didn't want to give the Feds the ability to start micromanaging them because they were taking Federal Funds. They were literally threatened with audits and all kinds of other things until they gave in.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uncovere ... ash-2009-5

It's no secret that some of the banks had to be pressured to participate in the program, with several bank CEOs saying they had been strongly encouraged to take the funds. But the documents are the first proof of the government's insistence.

"These documents show our government exercising unrestrained power over the private sector," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.

http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news8920.html

If it has indeed declined to accept $340 million in payments from banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California, the administration is tacitly admitting that it wants to control those banks as well as others that will try to pay back the taxpayers' money they took in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

By refusing repayment, the government can keep the leverage it bought with the bailouts. Banks that still "owe" would not be in position to reject the administration as a "partner."

This reminds us of mobsters making a small "investment" in a family-owned shop, which is not always wanted by the owners, and then using it to justify taking over the business.

Joseph DePaolo, president and CEO of Signature Bank in New York, one of the four banks making TARP repayments last week, said his company wanted to return $120 million it received because, in part, it wasn't comfortable with legislation passed that would limit compensation for salespeople. Those limits, he explained, would make it hard to recruit top professionals.

And then there's the fact that the bank didn't actually need the money. But, as we have learned, need is not relevant in the era of the bailout.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/article ... rp_re.html

@ ruveyn

You were saying?

Actually, Clinton did. While the dot.com bubble burst, at least numerically, in March 2000, the leadup had been demonstrating the cash weakness of the industry for at least a year or more before. They only that that had kept the burst off as long as it did was the large scale spending on Y2K preparations. Any cogent observer saw this coming long before, and leading indicators were off well before 2000.

Given that most telecom players were engaged in a game of growth before profits, the actual impact on government revenue of the dot com bubble was relatively small. While there were significant job losses in the sector, government revenues lost to the downturn were probably only in the order of about $300bn. Bush initiatives probably accounted for over twice that amount of loss of net revenue (through direct loss of revenue and increased expenditures).

As for terrorist events, Clinton had the World Trade Centre bombing, the USS Cole and the Oklahoma City bombing among others. Now, I will grant you that the scale of 9/11 has dwarfed those events, but it is foolish in the extreme to suggest that Bush's hands were tied after 9/11. The Administration made a very deliberate choice to aggressively expand the scope of government after 9/11 and cornered Congress into allowing them to do so. These might have been appropriate measures at the time (though I don't concede that point) but they certainly were not the only response, or a necessary response.

It is such a ridiculous thing . Inuyasha, in case you needed another example of how Fox News exposition severely impairs your judgment and makes you very inconsistent. What makes you think that a party proposing to add the party's bias to the constitution makes any sense to whatever you have been preaching about freedom, what the founding parents wanted and about ending tyranny ?

A balanced budget amendment would be bad how? It is generally a bad idea to be in debt, the idea of balancing the budget and working to get out of debt is a good idea, in fact it would also free up money as the debt is paid back, because we wouldn't have to pay as much interest.