Wall Street readied for a potential Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcy after Bank of America Corp. and Barclays Plc pulled out of talks to buy it and the government indicated it wouldn’t provide funds to prevent a collapse.
Banks and brokers today held a session for netting derivatives transactions with Lehman, or canceling trades that offset each other, in case the New York-based firm files for bankruptcy before midnight.
“The purpose of this session is to reduce risk associated with a potential Lehman” bankruptcy, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said in a statement today. The ISDA includes 218 banks, brokerages, insurance companies and other financial institutions from the U.S. and abroad.
The step indicates Wall Street lacks confidence that three days of talks to find a buyer for Lehman, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will be successful. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has led the talks with New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, was adamant two days ago against using taxpayer funds to help a purchaser take Lehman over.
U.S. regulators are betting that the financial system will be able to withstand the failure of a large institution without severe disruptions to an already weak economy.
they deserve what they aren’t getting. Of course, plenty of rascals are going to smell quite nicely for screwing others.
Tax them.
So do I, John.
Plenty of rascals have lined the pockets of the folks that might do something about this to make sure they don’t. Like Barack Obama, who received about $400,000 from employees at Lehman and another $100,000 from Fannie Mae…all in just four years. He was so upset by all this skulduggery that he put Jim Johnson, former Fannie Mae honcho and Countrywide pirate, in charge of selecting his Veep.
Change we can believe in, eh?
Here’s where experience counts. McCain apparently learned something from his brush with the S&L;crisis. He concluded that money is a great source of evil in politics, and has crusaded to try to fix it since then. I don’t agree with some of his solutions, but he has tried.
Obama has been caught in the rookie mistakes that McCain once saw. He’s taken [url=http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html]nearly six times[/url] as much money from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac folks in three years than McCain has in twenty years, the only Senator taking more being Dodd (D-CT).
I believe that people are free to donate money to whoever they’d like to, Jefferson. They might prefer Obama because he understands economics. Of course, I find it a bit amusing that you insinuate Obama is somehow responsible for Lehman’s demise. I think shifting the blame from Lehman to Obama makes typical politics, although it isn’t true.
I think there is a growing recognition that wall street and main street are all royally screwed with the current tax policy: which is essentially spend on credit given to us by the Chinese. It’s pretty basic: somebody’s got to pay for a $10 billion dollar a day war. Right now, Bush is spending on credit.
Are you assuming Obama is an idealist or a socialist of some sort? I know lots of reasserters claim it, but… as I’ve said before, he’s a pragmatist and a politician who believes in the free market. If he were a socialist, I suppose I’d find it ironic. But he is someone who believes in the capitalist system, (a “libertarian paternalist”), although one who would reconstruct a system that ensured people followed the rules in a transparent fashion. Have you heard of libertarian paternalism?
Lehman was warned by lots of people a few months ago to do something. They didn’t.
[blockquote]And … as I recall … McCain himself was direcetly involved in the S&L;housing related crisis of a few years ago. The United States Senate even censured him for it. [/blockquote]
I think you mean the Keating Five scandal…From Wikipedia:
[i]The Senate Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of (Senator John) Glenn in the scheme was minimal, and the charges against him were dropped. He was only criticized by the Committee for “poor judgment.”
The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain in the scheme was also minimal, and he too was cleared of all charges against him. McCain was criticized by the Committee for exercising “poor judgment” when he met with the federal regulators on Keating’s behalf. The report also said that McCain’s “actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him….Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate.” On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”[/i]
[blockquote]I believe that people are free to donate money to whoever they’d like to, Jefferson. They might prefer Obama because he understands economics. Of course, I find it a bit amusing that you insinuate Obama is somehow responsible for Lehman’s demise. I think shifting the blame from Lehman to Obama makes typical politics, although it isn’t true.
I think there is a growing recognition that wall street and main street are all royally screwed with the current tax policy: which is essentially spend on credit given to us by the Chinese. It’s pretty basic: somebody’s got to pay for a $10 billion dollar a day war. Right now, Bush is spending on credit. [/blockquote]
What an interesting datum. At that rate, the war will cost $3.65 trillion for FY2009, or about $700 billion more than the entire federal government is suppose to pass out this fiscal year, including Social Security, Medicare, Agriculture, Education, HHS, Energy, etc. Are you doing your data mining at DailyKos, John?
Yeah, and I’m certain it was Obama’s grasp of economics that made all those Lehman folks lard up The Messiah’s coffers. I can just hear it, “Now there’s a fella who understands a demand curve,” “I bet Barack grooves on marginal utility,” and “Obama’s so hot when he gets into the question of moral hazards.”
If anything is clear from Obama’s time warming a chair in the Illinois Senate, it’s that he’s a good apple-polisher. Fannie Mae and Lehman just want to be at the head of the line to get their apples shine up first.
John, here’s a quick [url=http://blog.heritage.org/2008/07/14/morning-bell-the-lefts-crony-capitilism-exposed/]primer[/url] on the blow-up, something to inform this child-like view you have of Freddie, Fannie and Lehman. If you’re not too shaken after reading that, try [url=http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/15/morning-bell-a-viscious-cycle-of-their-own-making/]this[/url] and [url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Friends_of_Lehman.html?showall]this[/url].
Jefferson, what is my “child-like” view? I didn’t know I had a view. All I know is that you read the Heritage foundation blog. Not exactly an objective organization.
Look, I’m going to have to agree with McCain that he doesn’t understand economics. Obama, at the very least, has a damn good team. Do you think he’s an ideologue? Lots of conservatives are impressed by who’s advising him.
I must say – the foundry is quite hysterical. They do a good job of saying that Fannie Mae is supported by Democrats. True. Not a good exploration of what Fannie may does, or how commercial lenders (who probably supported both Republicans and Democrats) benefited from the government’s support. It contained a lot of politicking, but not a lot of analysis. Fannie mae’s mistake was that it trusted the private part of its organization. The problem wasn’t the government part, but that the private sector thought it could screw the government since it wasn’t watching.
The ranting about ACORN is bizarre. It sounds like a bunch of fat cats trying to point the finger at the poor: “hey, they’re corrupt like us.” Not that I’d be surprised, human nature being what it is. Obama worked with ACORN. So? What does that prove?
You’re right Jefferson. I was wrong. It’s not ten billion dollars a day. I exaggerated. How’s just the paltry sum of $3 trillion dollars. Spent on credit. Three Trillion dollars could do a lot of work here. Probably could have given plenty of people jobs; we might have invested in alternative energy. Instead, wasted.
Mr. Wilkins – Here’s how we arrived at today’s situation:
The tech bubble fermented for 8 years under Mr. Bill who, in 1999, rescinded the Glass Steagell Act, allowing investment banks to enter the mortgage business. His Ms. Albright’s foreign policy fruit ripened into 9/11. Everything else is baloney. Bush has masterfully cleaned up the mess, including bringing the Iraq situation to s successful conclusion with not much help ( see this AM’s WSJ op-ed page ).
Re. Acorn: They are under inditement all across the land for registering non-existent people. Part of Chicago tradition. Obama should be included. JFK won nationally by 100,000 votes, mostly of dead Chicagoans.