Eyepopping Bailout Numbers

[spurster]

A cool $1 trillion

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/washington/19cnd-cong.html

Congressional Leaders Were Stunned by Warnings

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: September 19, 2008

WASHINGTON — It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first.

...

Lawmakers in both parties described the meeting in Ms. Pelosi’s office on Thursday night with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke as collaborative, and that they were prepared to put politics aside to address the needs of the American people.

...

Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate banking committee, said in a television interview that cost to the government of purchasing bad debt could run to $1 trillion — a potential warning sign since Mr. Shelby is a longtime skeptic of government intervention in the private market.

...

[Nbadan]

Ouch!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/10/us/politics/10fannie.graphic.jpg

[cool hand]

Ron Paul for president........ok, maybe Bob Barr. anything but these dick suckers.

[Wild Cobra]

Dan, you know better than trusting the New York Slimes, right?

Take a look-see at what Open Secrets (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html) has to say. According to this trusted web site, Obama has recieved $126,349 vs. McCains $21,550 between 1998 to 2008. These numbers reflect regulation that lead to the crisis rather than the short term numbers that appear to be in error.

[bwdizzle]

It just shows that mccain plans on employing the same bullshit that has failed this country mccain has 26yrs in the senate and still employee the same old republican rehortic NO Mcain,NO Palin, No bull

http://pushhamburger.com/liberty.jpg http://pushhamburger.com/global%20warming%20101.jpg

[Nbadan]

Dan, you know better than trusting the New York Slimes, right?

Take a look-see at what Open Secrets (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html) has to say. According to this trusted web site, Obama has recieved $126,349 vs. McCains $21,550 between 1998 to 2008. These numbers reflect regulation that lead to the crisis rather than the short term numbers that appear to be in error.

The person who compiled this data apparently didn't search the FEC site for the individual donors' names, and probably simply did blanket searches for "Freddie" and "Fannie".

If you search the FEC for "Geoffrey T. Boisi", a Director of Freddie Mac, you will see exactly where the NYT got their data. In fact, Boisi has contributed $72,400 to McCain since 2007.

Yet this data is conveniently omitted from the above....

[spurster]

Dan, you know better than trusting the New York Slimes, right?

Take a look-see at what Open Secrets (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html) has to say. According to this trusted web site, Obama has recieved $126,349 vs. McCains $21,550 between 1998 to 2008. These numbers reflect regulation that lead to the crisis rather than the short term numbers that appear to be in error.


So the conclusion is that it takes less to bribe McCain compared to Obama? Or maybe Obama and McCain are both guilty, but Obama is more guilty? Anyway, the comments on the link are interesting for pointing out various contributions to McCain that the web site's methodology omits. Also, these organizations will contribute to all powers to get their voice heard. I thought this was freedom of speech for conservatives, but apparently this is considered bribing when convenient.

My take: We should have public campaign financing of all senators, reps, in addition to the President. If one candidate goes private (as Obama is doing now), the candidates being public financed should get money to match or partially match the additional spending. This would reduce to a great extent the influence that big money interests have on our elected officials. Politicians can't help but be influenced/bribed by their big contributors, though Obama's $126K doesn't look so bad when you consider this is less than 1% (maybe less than 0.1%) of his total campaign costs.

[Nbadan]

....the problem is 527s...there are many more rich guys (like Pickens) than move-on.orgs that fund 527s that support Republican causes, that's why Obama chose to go with private financing...