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Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
Burwell #41 Students earn their places at our public universities, and most must work hard to graduate. I'm sure their parties and vacations are not as extravagant as those held by the executives enjoying 0% loans from the government. Debts should be repaid, but this can become impossible, especially when high interest and penalties are involved. I regularly receive solicitations from loan sharks. The big print says 0% the small print says 29%. The loan sharks ask the government to collect for them at the higher rate while receiving loans at 0% themselves. Reforms are needed to stop the surge of bankruptcies. As for the candidate to the bar, if no fraud was involved it proves the surf puppy's case that weird remedies are granted the student loan lender. How will he pay back that loan if he can't chase ambulances? What hypocrites the bar would be to deny entry to those who are bankrupt. After all lawyers take lots of baths, they just can't wash off the slime.— January 23, 2010 5:59 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
Mr. Bauder 34 I read your articles of a few years ago that explained how our purchases of foreign manufactured goods were financed by foreign purchases of interest bearing debt. You rightly predicted that the day of reckoning would be made more painful for both supplier and consumer by this action. One of the consequences is the walk on the dollar, which even today is improving our trade balances. If the walk should become a run our trade deficits might disappear due to foreign goods being priced off the shelves. This country can still manufacture, farm, mine and produce raw materials. Our trade deficits will eventually be settled with goods and services, through surpluses. This should help our manufacturing, and tourist business etc. I see a sounder US economy ahead when foreign creditors force us to settle up, not richer perhaps, but based on production instead of consumption. What do you think? Because you predicted the bubble, we all should be reading.— January 22, 2010 5:47 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
Mr. Bauder 122 The banks run the world economy, and have done so since the monetarist nostrums won the day in the Nineteen Eighties. and the leveraged buyout emasculated the manufacturing corporations that dominated for the century before. On this point I agree even with Ralph Nader, but I disagree about the results. I see general but incomplete progress grinding to a halt due to a collapse in demand caused by an over reliance on credit to stimulate the economy. We have enjoyed a long period of prosperity and the dominant banks deserve credit for this along with the blame for our present collapse. We need to increase spending power to empty worldwide inventories, reforming banking and lowering interest rates is only part of the solution. Increasing the minimum wage could help, along with restoring worker protections. Unfortunately powerful interests can defeat these reforms if presented piecemeal. I expect they will be combined with some wildly popular idea that can't be filibustered. One such idea is the payroll tax holiday. Workers and businesses currently pay eighteen percent in social security taxes alone, if this were temporarily suspended it could give a nice jump start to the economy. It should be combined with an after holiday extension of the tax to those making millions. This would be dangerous of course, since some might want a permanent holiday and that would explode our deficit and currency, but these are not safe times. The Brown victory might make this easier, since nothing would help the Democrats more than the Republicans filibustering a tax cut at election time, because their banker friends don't want to pay their share. A tax cut will be part of the second stimulus. It will pass.— January 20, 2010 2:37 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
To answer Mindy #114 Real education is about the soul, not money. I commend your acquaintance for leaving his television set and trying to improve himself. The cost of his transplant will probably far exceed his education costs. The tragedy is that he didn't get his education before he made his stupid choices. No student is certain to live to graduation.— January 20, 2010 12:53 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
Mr. Bauder, I believed the economic crew that Obama chose was the right one at the time of his inauguration, because they reassured world markets, and I believe they have the flexibility of thought to recognize failure and change direction. Now is the time. We should remember that the stimulus package with all its flaws is the most vigorous response ever to an economic downturn, if measured in dollars. The troubles are simply larger than ever before. That such an amount of money could be printed without a surge of inflation shows the untapped capacity of the world economy, and shows the need for a second stimulus that we should see soon. These stimulus packages are a Keynesian response to the current troubles, and demonstrate independence from the bankers who follow the Monetarist belief that only banks should print money. Obama won his position with daring and careful planning. He is not overly patient. We will see action.— January 20, 2010 12:20 a.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
In response to SurfPuppy, I endorse the Direct Student Loan of the 1970's which helped me through college, not the current program which I am unfamiliar with. The idea is to replace high interest debt with fixed rates. Perhaps your student loans could be bundled and replaced. Your case nevertheless is a poster child for a supporting point I never made because of space, that the wave of bankruptcies caused by complex financial instruments will completely clog our courts, making only the lawyers rich. There must be a way to resolve these cases before bankruptcy. Mr. Bauder has pointed out that the previous bankruptcy laws kept the creditors respectful, because bankruptcy lost them money. Now thanks to hedging and the nasty terms of the new law, they believe that the government, through judges and marshals, is their own loan sharking thug, and that if that doesn't work they collect on the loan sharking insurance they placed with AIG. A college education is worth any price, even bankruptcy, at least you know your rights. And the surf is still free.— January 19, 2010 10:59 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
I read those articles and you were right on the money. Just as death wrote every line of the fire code, fraud wrote every line of the business code, and anyone who proposes deregulation encourages what is now a criminal act. We understand this when someone argues for a new look at our drug laws, but when a Milton Friedman or Allan Greenspan propose breaking the current business law they are hailed as saints of our cult of greed. Even worse, proponents of deregulation were placed in the Fed and in key law enforcement offices, this was like placing Cheech and Chong in charge of drug law enforcement, except that it's not funny yet. Generations to come will laugh at us. I agree we should return to the laws that worked for decades and were recently repealed, I would go back further to fixed interest rates, and ban the ARM. This is the year for reform and confronting the banking powers, Obama intends to aim his formidable rhetorical cannons at the banks, hoping the Republicans will stand in the way and lose the election. Amidst the smoke and confusion lets hope some good laws get passed.— January 19, 2010 1:43 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
Thanks for reading the proposal to help stem the wave of high interest rate bankruptcy. The basic idea is similar to the old Direct Student Loan program, loans for those with no conventional security, except that it's limited to retiring high interest debt. The government might demand special means of collecting, as it does with the student loans. The perfect storm of a bad economy, new bankruptcy laws. floating interest rates and default insurance is sending millions slouching towards bankruptcy. This program helps those who would not be in distress at reasonable interest rates. More is needed of course, and the government must lead the way because the jokers who lent us into this disaster invariably ask the government to collect for them, the jokers who borrow declare bankruptcy, and the judge must follow government rules in resolving the mess. Mr. Bauder, what do you think is the best proposal to divert the bankruptcy stampede?— January 18, 2010 11:39 p.m.
Wall Street is feasting off Main Street’s pain
The government and the Fed should loan directly. The banks will not refinance their scandalously profitable credit card debt and the bloated payments are stifling the world economy. The government should refinance directly, secured by future tax returns and Social Security payments. This program, universally available at perhaps nine percent, would force the credit card companies to lower their rates to match, or loan their money elsewhere as a result of their cashed up position, Banks could administer the program, and this might break down the monolithic Wall Street opposition to reform. This program might pay for itself, but if it loses money helping those hoodwinked into 29% interest rates, at least it helps the victims as well as the perps of the fraud that is modern banking. The previous bailouts mostly helped those who should be styling orange jumpsuits on the courtroom catwalk, while preserving their "right" to seize assets under the absurd terms of the new bankruptcy laws. A Main Street bailout would be very popular, and an election approaches.— January 16, 2010 5:22 p.m.
Fabiani pushes Chargers stadium at Tailgate Park
The press might be damned, but I hope before that happens that the Ghost of Christmas Future might give the press and the Spanos family a ride on the LA freeways to the City of Industry at one in the afternoon. Perhaps they might learn before it's too late that millions can't replace a Mission Valley afternoon, and that a beer and the truth tastes better than the Spanos buffet. Perhaps someone will learn the difference between being loved as a public benefactor and hated as a notorious miser. Just kidding, we know these people. They deserve LA. But LA might not have room. The main difference between Los Angeles and Damnation is that the road to Damnation has no clogged freeways. Meanwhile we should SAVE OUR STADIUM. You never know-- the Saints might come marching in.— December 30, 2009 10:19 p.m.