Bend Over

You’re going to get fucked, and you’re going to like it.

Bloomberg:

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

The Dear Leader also promises to get in on the action:

WASHINGTON – President Bush argued Monday that the government’s dramatic rescue of Citigroup was necessary to “safeguard the financial system” and help the economy recover, and he said there could be more such moves if other institutions need help.

$7.4 trillion.  That’s a lot of our samoleans.  As for the Shittybank bailout, Krugman says it’s a good idea badly executed:

Mark Thoma has the rundown of informed reactions. A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.

We are utterly fucked.

20 Comments

Or it’s Bush’s Last Fuck YOU to US America. Much like a Wolverine taking a big dump on the vanquished’s grave.

Don’t like me? Well fuck y’all, y’all.

Please entertain this theory:

A) Obama is elected; Republicans in mourning and are lost and eating their own.

B) Economic shitpile is bad, and Obama will be spending much of his first 100 days trying to deal with it.

C) W, in association with Paulson, and other assorted GOP douchebags, strategize a plan to bankrupt the country and force a situation so horrible that Obama will spend the next two years trying to fix it.

D) Obama can’t fix it in time for the 2010 midterms; GOP runs scare ads and blames Obama and the Dems for the mess.

E) GOP regains control of the Congress; stonewalls Obama for the rest of his term.

F) They bring out Sarah Palin for the 2012 election; she gets all mavericky and people are seduced into voting for the succubus.

@rptrcub:
By that point, I will have dug a bunker deep into Canada City Bedrock and await the Radioactive Zombie Hordes.

This is Citi’s second trip to the trough. Like any 3 year old with new parents, they have learned that whining works. Open your wallets before you bend over.

Obama is about to speak. Is dawn about to break?

rptrcub: Seriously, kids — the 18 Month Rule is in effect. If the Congress doesn’t get its shit together and pass some good relief bills from the jump, there will be no signs of a turn around in time for November 2010, for which the GOP is, right now, warming up the “BARRY RAISED YOUR TAXES” ads.

It cannot be understated: if the Democrats screw this up and do not turn this car around, pronto, then I might be in a nursing home the next time we get a liberalish President and Congress at the same time.

@chicago bureau: So what you’re saying is they have about 3 Friedmans to pull this off.

blogenfreude: Almost right. The beauty part about Friedman Units is that there is a limitless supply of them. Obamaplex has an absolute limit of 3.00 FU (+/- .25) to take this recession out back and shoot it.

Obama used the “S” word — sacrifice. Contrast Bush after 9/11: “go shopping.”

@Dodgerblue: Well there you go. Obviously the Unicorn is a socialist.

Talk about stinque-E, when Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a longtime investor in Citigroup, said he planned to increase his stake in the bank to 5 percent from less than 4 percent last Thursday he looked craaaaaazy. Now with the stock price this morning, it proves the old adage that it pays to have friends in high places.

I owe a shitload of money to citi for my grad degree. In this new financial world order, the powers that be can’t seriously expect borrowers to keep paying such antiquated instruments like student loans…I smell another industry bailout.

@problemwithcaring: They will never forgive our student loans or even modify them. They love them some income streams.

The idea is to loot the country into virtual bankruptcy and get out of town before Obama takes the oath. All he will be able to do is try to manage a currency crisis and debt crises while the RNC organizes the neo-Nazis and militias and returning veterans into a counter-Bolshevik resistance movement and works with Blackwater and freelance subcontractors to orchestrate false flag terrorist attacks all over the United States. If Obama is not wasted by a snakehandling suicide bomber drugged and massaged by a retired covert ops officer or a rifle team in the employ of the RNC by 2010, he’ll be accused of conspiring with Al Qaeda to lay the ground work for the North American Caliphate. Cheney will lead the chorus of psychoconservatives and completely reverse the Democratic gains of this year and begin his 2012 campaign in earnest under the banner: Returning America to Safety. His first campaign ads will show him standing in the ruin of the Sears Tower, a false flag attack orchestrated by Blackwater with a suitcase nuke., with a massive neo-Nazi militia behind him howling and firing into the sky.

Reagan started the Republican plan to bankrupt the US government so all those pesky social programs would die off. This is just more of same, but with more zeros.

I am so, so happy that we only have a few more weeks of these absolutely terrifying articles about Bush’s utter fucking disregard for the American people.

$24 K PER PERSON? How could someone see that statistic and say, “OK, let’s do it”?

@Dodgerblue: And everyone said so at the time. Thank god we bankrupted the commies first.

Robert Reich’s blog post on this:

If you had any doubt at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street; the utter lack of transparency behind the biggest government giveaway in history to financial executives, and their shareholders, directors, and creditors; and the intimate connections the lie between Administrations — both Republican and Democratic — and the heavyweights on Wall Street, your doubts should be laid to rest. Today it was decided the government will guarantee more than $300 billion of troubled mortgages and other assets of Citigroup under a federal plan to stabilize the lender after its stock fell 60 percent last week. The company will also will get a $20 billion cash infusion from the Treasury Department, adding to the $25 billion the bank received last month under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

This is not a particularly good deal for American taxpayers, but it is a marvelous deal for Citi. In return for all the cash and guarantees they are giving away, taxpayers will get only $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8 percent dividend. No other strings are attached. The senior executives of Citi, including those who have served at the highest levels in the US government, have done their jobs exceedingly well. The American public, including the media, have not the slightest clue what just happened.

Meanwhile, more than a million workers in the automobile industry, along with six million homeowners in danger of losing their homes, and a millions of Americans who depend on small businesses and retailers for paychecks, are getting nothing at all.

@RomeGirl: Ha, joke’s on them. Most of us don’t have $24K.

@RomeGirl: You think it’s going to stop? Wall Street, the RNC and their proxies in the militia movement will be attacking the Obama Administration 24/7. Bankers, emboldened by these invitations to loot at will, will just climb through the windows of their mortgator’s homes and eat their children. Caught bloody faced, they’ll snarl ‘bend over my Porsche! I own you!’ before turning to shout encouragement out the windows at the Adkisson Brigades ransacking the neighborhood and exchanging an enthusiastic ‘Heil Cheney’ with them. With every dawn a new unspeakable horror.

@FlyingChainSaw: Do you give out Valium with your replies?

@FlyingChainSaw: I think it’d be more like Spain in the ’30s than Germany. I can haz Civil War II?

Add a Comment
Please log in to post a comment