One of the things the Kid and I do in times of mass suckitude is “Lottery shopping”. Mostly we imagine what our super cool house would be like. But we also plan trips, etc.

So I was thinking about what we would do if we did give every grown up in the country $297,000 instead of bailing out the rich. It’s not enough to buy a house here. It’s almost enough to buy a 2 bedroom flat. It is enough to pay off all my debt (about 10k) and make my credit pretty. And it’s enough to pay for me to finish college with living expenses. Plus, if I got the money for back child support from Kid’s dad, I could put 40K into a college fund for him.

So if you got $297K, what would you do?

Ruth and I were talking this morning about how all that’s on the news is the bailout, but no one is explaining anything that makes sense.

Ruth has a giant math brain, easily able to understand complex problems and solutions. I have a superhero talent for deciphering bureaucracy speak. And neither of us can figure out what the fuck is really going on. And that is what really scares me. You don’t know how many half written blog posts are sitting in the que because I just can’t figure out what the fuck they are trying to do (other than fuck over the entire American populace, but that ones obvious)

Then along comes James Galbraith with the only fucking plan that makes actual sense to me.

Is this bailout still necessary?

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They’re called “loans.”

With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn’t, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.

Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund — a cosmetic gesture — and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary — as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can’t save everyone, and those investors aren’t poor.
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With this solution, the systemic financial threat should go away. Does that mean the economy would quickly recover? No. Sadly, it does not. Two vast economic problems will confront the next president immediately. First, the underlying housing crisis: There are too many houses out there, too many vacant or unsold, too many homeowners underwater. Credit will not start to flow, as some suggest, simply because the crisis is contained. There have to be borrowers, and there has to be collateral. There won’t be enough.

I trust Galbraith. I trust his ideas and his family history of pulling this country through devastating economic downturns. His father, John Kenneth, was FDR’s architect for the New Deal and James has continued on with progressive ideas for how to help the economy (and the majority of us regular people that make up the economy).

Go read the rest of his article. And then have a stiff drink as you realize that neither political party has plans to do anything like this to fix our upside down system.

Or you can go for wishful thinking with Blue Lyon. I could certainly use the We Deserve It Dividend. Kid and I could have a home with that.

H/T to Anglachel

Your Democratic leaders in Action (while talking about the possibility of including the ability for bankruptcy judges to re-write the terms of mortgages, you know the ONLY proposal in the bailout plan that MIGHT ACTUALLY SAVE A FUCKING HOUSE)

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Obama said the provision was a priority, but one that he’d be willing to sacrifice in the interest of a bipartisan deal.

He said he told Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader, that the measure “is probably something that we shouldn’t try to do in this piece of legislation.”

That’s right little people. You poor homeowners are once again fodder in the struggle for bipartisan cooperation among the privileged. Can’t let those pesky things like waves new homeless people get in the way of saving our friends, the banksters.

Of course Obama has already shelved his half assed healthcare plan. Can’t afford it now that we have to pay for Wall Street’s illness. I’m waiting for them to cancel all public school education because the stock market is broken.

My lab is now swarming with ants.

Fuckles.

For the rage of the recently rich.

I’ve had my own bad day, thank you very much.

The single tiny benefit I get from my job has been a quarterly $10 bus pass. That is it. No retirement. No health care. No discounted state employee tuition. No sick days or paid vacations. No cost of living raises. Nothing but a buss pass.

And I just found out that the price for my buss pass has gone from $10 a quarter to $120. I am so pissed right now that I can’t even do the math on what percentage of an increase that is.

But that is not all the bad news.

There is a level 3 sex offender who has or will be starting classes on my tiny campus. I am totally fine with giving everyone (even sex offenders) the chance to rehabilitate themselves. But the administration in all it’s wisdom decided that my campus can share a security guard with the campus 2 blocks away. I am often the only staff member here after 4pm. It is a very desolate spot in an otherwise urban area. My boss is worried for me. I am worried for me. I don’t even know who the student is. And who wants to bet that the administration is not going to shell out for another security guard but will instead cut my hours (and the lab hours) so that they don’t have to shell out the extra cash.

This is fucking intolerable.

First- a tale of 2 colonizers. Namely Spain and England. (Yes- I know the problems colonization and exploitation. Just go with me on this for a minute)

A couple hundred years ago, in 1492 to be exact, Spain ended it’s long battles with Moors. The royal coffers were empty, and something needed to be done quick to replenish them. It was a relatively cheap investment to send Columbus off with a couple of ships in search of a quick route to the east. Instead, he “discovered” the Americas and Spain got access to a shitload of raw materials for relatively cheap.

England also needed money. But more than money, they needed space. Overpopulation and poverty were making the riff raff less manageable.

Spain sent people, generally single men or men who left their families at home, into the New World to suck out all the resources they possibly could as fast as they could. The men they sent generally made their fortunes after a few years and then went home.

England sent entire families into the New World. They banished people for crimes like stealing bread and had them “transported”. After so many years of working off their debts or their criminal sentences, the people were then free to climb up the social and economic ladder in a place with a lot more space and opportunity than at home. They had the first real chance of owning their own farms and property, things that were nearly impossible without nobility or noble connections at home.

Eventually, Spain’s formula for colonization collapsed and took the Spanish economy with it. England’s did not.

That is where the original American dream comes from. The idea of homeownership is central to our national identity because it was something so completely out of the realm of normal before that. Normal people didn’t own farms or land or homes. They were tenants of wealthy land owners who worked their entire lives to improve the finances of another.

And back then, just like now, the future wealth of a person was

Anything giving me the expected numbers of foreclosures, or the recent national numbers for foreclosures.

And I am a fucking google queen. I am a pro at finding obscure numbers, like the percentage of non-custodial parents in arrears on child support payments or the percentage of income given to charity by economic class (the poor give about the same percentage of income as the rich overall, but it hurts them more to do it.)

So why can’t I get real numbers on this shit?

I’m at work so I may actually have missed all the question asking that congress is doing, but I have a few of my own questions for the masterminds of the bankster bailout.

1) Exactly how many homes will be saved from foreclosure under this plan? 1 or 2, maybe even a dozen? Does that number include the vacation homes of the banksters who will get to keep their giant bonuses and therefor not have to worry about losing their ski chalet in Aspen?

2) What does the American public get for 700 billion dollars? Anything? For 700 billion plus 4 extra bucks we might get a Starbucks coffee. But what exactly is the benefit to the American taxpayer for spending this money. Is there any value in it for us?

3) Why is this so last minute? Why do we have to decide right now when you two have been telling us the worst was over for months?

4) This whole no oversight of the treasury department clause- it feels like the financial version of the enemy combatant thing. Aren’t you really just trying to pull a fast one on us (again) to gain more executive power?

5) So what you’re really saying is that it’s going to cost us 700 billion PLUS our constitutional rights to democratic oversight to save these companies? Is that really a cost effective use of our money and rights?