None of what Goldman Sachs has done has contributed to growing our economy or increasing our industrial output. They have partitioned a huge amount of their leveraged invesments into foreign stocks!

Jimmi, since so few folks seem likely to understand or care about this, we might as well follow Goldman’s lead and at least cover our own asses, right?

It’s just that that is not what we are talking about in regards to this topic (the taxpayer return on investment from loaning the banks all these funds).

Now, if we are going to engage in a debate in the economy as a whole, you are absolutely about the deficit spending and pork barrel projects, then congress is clearly complicit–but it was not clear to me in your post you had broadened the scope beyond the discussion at hand

Though I am still of the opinion the stimulus bill was/is necessary in a time of crisis, I am with you that it was done poorly.

My bad gerry, I just re-read my comment above, I didn’t mention the Bush or Obama administrations specifically, although I should have. its all one big mess.

Money-losing MySpace begets money-losing Facebook begets money-losing Twitter. At some point doesn’t someone need to make a profit?

The geese throwing began with George Bush and his treasury department, was joined by the Fed, and was continued by Obama and his treasury department.

You are absolutely right about this, but Congress, both the republican dominated and now the democrats, are the ones who drafted the pork-filled budgets and the stimulus packages, and ran up the federal deficits. They didn’t “begrudgingly go along for the ride.” They were complicit.

For you to ignore the culpability of the previous administration…

I do recognize absurd policies from previous administrations, as I just mentioned it in my above comment about what happened in 2002. You are the one who is ignoring what I have said.

None of what Goldman Sachs has done has contributed to growing our economy or increasing our industrial output. They have partitioned a huge amount of their leveraged invesments into foreign stocks! It is as if they know what is coming, and that the economic crisis in America is not going away anythime soon.

You know, Jimmy, I actually agree with some of your points, but you are so ridiculously biased you have no credibility.

The geese throwing began with George Bush and his treasury department, was joined by the Fed, and was continued by Obama and his treasury department. Congress basically and begrudgingly went along for the ride.

Add in the republican pushed legislation for the last 30 years, including some significant legislation signed by Bill Clinton, but then accelerated to the Nth degree by some truly corrupt and evil bastards in the early Bush years (led by Phil Gramm) and you’ve got a major cluster you know what.

For you to ignore the culpability of the previous administration and the past 30 years of absurdist policy designed to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the already wealthy makes you either a tool or member.

Now, if you want to be outraged that the 23 percent return is far below what the taxpayer could receive if the system wasn’t gamed by Wall Street, I’m right there with you.

The rules were specifically written to allow Wall Street to choose how and when it would repay the taxpayers — heck, a month ago, the treasury department almost let Wall Street off the hook completely. If not for the uproar, we wouldn’t even be seeing that 23 percent.

But if you took those warrants the government holds and sold them on the open market — or held on to them until the value rises–we’d be seeing a helluva lot more of a return.

Instead, we let the issuers of the warrants determine when they would be paid off–and of course they are paying them off early–meanwhile, these banks still hold billions in toxic assets.

The problem hasn’t gone away; the boost in the stock market has merely hidden it again.

The dot-com bubble bursting, followed by the investor panic induced by 9-11 was the emergency justifying similar nonsense back in 2002. Look how well that turned out.

I guess Glodman Sachs executives deserve a rather hefty bonus this year for rescuing America from the brink. I thought you were being sarcastic with your first comment above but now I see you were being completely serious.

We’re no longer in the land of “prefer” we’re in the land of coping with disaster.

When Sully Sullenberger landed in the Hudson and managed to save the lives of all on board, were you carping that he should have landed in the East River?

Republicans — who said nothing about the approaching disaster while it was still approaching and while they held the executive — are now carping about steps taken which, while no doubt imperfect, were occasioned by an emergency.

Here’s a thought for my Republican friends: if you don’t want to land in the river, stop tossing geese into the engines.

Real commercial banks that do bank things – like give loans and mortgages – are doing horribly.

The government buys in after the panic’s set in and asset prices are ridiculously cheap. In this case in September people were claiming these sub-prime mortgages were totally worthless, but now the banks refuse to sell them because in a year or so they’ll be worth a lot more money.

“It should come as no surprise that AIG became a conduit to funnel the cash to its top trading partners. After all, in announcing AIG’s first bailout on Sept. 16, the Federal Reserve said it was extending an $85 billion loan to prevent “a disorderly failure” and “to assist AIG in meeting its obligations as they come due.” Since then, the government has extended tens of billions of dollars more to the troubled institution. It repeatedly justified those moves by saying that AIG’s rescue was not meant to save the insurer, but the complex web of companies that were interlinked through the toxic credit-default swaps AIG issued. Those companies, AIG detailed Sunday, include Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs , Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley , as well as foreign banks like Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank and Barclays.

… it would appear we needed to funnel money through AIG to enable Goldman Sachs to pay back their TARP. Now if only the government could find another company to loan say $500B to funnel back to AIG, they could pay us back with interest too!

In other news, I hear that Bernie Maddoff is not really in jail. He is really working under deep cover for the government managing the TARP payback program.