TheAgitator.com
A Carefully-Planned, Not-At-All-Slapped-Together Number Pulled Out of Thin Air
Thursday, September 25th, 2008I don’t know about you, but when this administration says, “just trust us,” I think we’d all be justified to run screaming in the other direction.
[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.
That was Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon an article went up at Forbes.com with this passage:
In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!!
So, they’ve been putting this together for several months, according to Tony Fratto, but it was somehow unexpected and unpreventable? Again,
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!
Great. I just bruised my forehead on the desk.
Let’s take it one step further: Whiskey Tango Charlie Foxtrot.
The sense of unreality keeps increasing. Trying to get my head around the absolute dumbassery that is slathering the whole public arena? It just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing.
[whimper] please make it go away. please? [/whimper]
What’s more scary - that they plucked the number from thin air, or that the numbers they pluck from thin air end up being too low?
We need to start casting this in a way that gets people more fired up — it’s not 700 billion, it’s THREE FOURTHS OF A TRILLION. Anyone who can pluck either one of these numbers from thin air and expect me or you to buy it should be strung up by the neck from a fucking lamp post.
Hat tip to whomever posted about Karl Denninger — Denninger actually read the text of the bill and the $700bn figure is irrelevant.
$700bn is what the Treasury can have outstanding AT ANY ONE TIME. In other words, the Treasury can purchase $700bn worth of bad debt, sell it off for whatever pennies on the dollar and bring the outstanding balance back to zero. Whereupon, the Treasury can begin ANOTHER ROUND of purchasing. And another. And another. Until ALL the bad debt is cleared.
We’re talking more than $5tn.
$5,000,000,000,000.00
5 million million. 5,000 billion.
5.0 x 10^12
Oh, and the Dems were never serious about homeowner mortgage relief. It was just a bargaining chip.
> Hat tip to whomever posted about Karl Denninger….
Denninger’s “Market Ticker”
> The Dems were never serious about homeowner mortgage relief.
> It was just a bargaining chip.
Oh, absolutely.
Bush is going to come out of this smelling like a turd thanks to Paulson, but it should be noted that the House Republican minority is the only political faction putting up any resistance to this outright swindle.
[...] (hat tip: Radley Balko) [...]
As far as Congress goes, you can see who the good guys and the bads guys were right here.
With all this talk of whiskey, I need a drink. Perhaps, I need 700 billion drinks.
[...] I knew it. My intuition is confirmed. Thank you, good [...]
Is the government going to bail me out when i file bankruptcy? Hell no. I dont even think they will let me file bankruptcy anymore. I am probably stuck with all the debt. I dont even need 20,000 dollars. What is this going to do to the US dollar? Make it incredibly worthless when we have to buy oil frmo the middle east oil guys, who are going to want even more money because it will take more US money in order for them to get the same amount of money in world market value that they are currently receiving now. Look forward to gas going up even higher guys.