Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (FULL TEXT)

reply to post by Open_Minded Skeptic

On the conspiracy front - this might be part of the set up to allow Bush to declare national martial law due to the economy collapse and 'postpone' the election...

If he were to do that, I think you have seen how Americans react when they are ignored.
Politicians, be warned. We are sick of it, and we're not going to put up with it anymore.
You've pulled the wool over our eyes ONE TOO MANY TIMES.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Thanks so much for this link, I was trying to find around who had taken the time to get a link.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Is this Bill the right one or is the Title just their way of really slapping any Representative that didn't support it....jeeeez

H R 3997 RECORDED VOTE 29-Sep-2008 2:07 PM
QUESTION: On Concurring in Senate Amendment With An Amendment
BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes

The link

Surely I am looking at the wrong Bill!

Of course in the aftermath of the bill not passing the Republicans are blaming the Democrats and vice versa. Congress is stupid. Sad and stupid.

They are actually blaming each other for not letting criminals get off the hook.

They are actually blaming each other for not rewarding the same criminals who got the financial system into this mess.

They are actually blaming each other for not giving the very same criminals who caused this mess unprecedented power over the financial system.

What a bunch of morons. Nancy Pelosi and John McCain should be ashamed of themselves for feigning like they want that POS bill to pass. If they really do, neither are worthy for office or votes come November 4th.

At least the Democrats and Republicans with good sense stood their ground.

There are other alternatives and they should be explored.

For once the system has seemed to work. Been an awful long time since it has.

I agree---the system seems to finally have worked. What this means as far as the economy, only time will tell, but bailing out those thieves would have been exponentially worse.

Could anyone please break this down into layman's terms? No kidding, I appreciate those with the understanding of these bills and from all of the flags and no replies I do not think I am alone.
Thanks.

reply to post by antar


In 1992 Clinton passed a bill that would allow those that did not make much money a chance at buying a home with little or no money down. The banks took advantage of this and got greedy. They gave out too many loans that went bad because people could not afford what they bought. Well this all happened at once and the market for homes dropped out. This leaves BILLIONS in bad loans unpaid, and banks suddenly were told by bigger banks to pay up sucka. Well the banks could not pay, and the bigger central banks stopped giving loans to the smaller banks. Money stopped flowing between lenders. Operating costs and payroll are eating up anything the banks have left, and we are pretty much screwed. A run on the banks will cause the dollar to become worthless and we are back to 1929 or worse. However if we bail out these banks we run the risk of hyper inflation and the dollar is kaput. So either way we are in deep trouble. Along with the rest of the world, esp China and the UK. They bought billions of dollars in mortgages that are now worthless. The GOP does not want to run the risk of hyper inflation among other things. The dems think we should bail out the failing banks..mostly due to the fact that the banks taking a nose dive were operated by former DNC folk. That and they are trying to save their socialist programs paid for by a booming economy. More money out there, the more they can tax us. I say let the banks fall, put people in prison, and let the free market work itself out.

[edit on 29-9-2008 by TXMACHINEGUNDLR]

reply to post by antar


This is as I see it.

A close door deal went down with the financial committee after the first three page bill was introduced. They then put a more "conclusive" bill in to "protect" (which means punish) the small guy within the company and also the American economy. The bill pledged that they needed 700 billion to sustain itself and revive the market, which means they were trying to re-inflate or stimulate growth by pumping more money at the private sector and giving a (very) temporary patch to a permanent and perpetual problem.

Pelosi issued congressional martial law to keep the bill closely underwraps while they were fine tuning the bill. They tried the same rush/breech that George W. Bush had tried to do with his empty plea, but the secrecy caused a stir and people who were given the bill immediately went to work to dissect it. Push comes to shove, the bill is bunk and the Republicans who feel left out are incredibly critical of it and find all the flaws. The Republicans vote against it, as it was unwise in it's original form, come to find out it was just some highway corporate robbery of the American people. They didn't need 700 billion, they pulled that number out of thin air like they did their money.

We dodged a bullet today. A trillion dollar at interest bullet.

Are you all seeing what the MSM is doing right now? CNN and FOX are both feeding the market with fear and opinions. This is going to get real nasty in the MSM really fast and you will see the masses of people starting to sound like a tv new caster spitting all the fear they want us to spread. WE NEED TO BE RATIONAL , CALM, and EMOTIONLESS when we are dealing with this Bill. Yes people are going to be hit HARD by this not passing but we need to STAND UP and fight this horrible horrible administration.

Ron Paul was right from the start and Im luaghing my lil coin butt off right now saying "WE TOLD YOU SO!"

Continue to Call and Write your Senators and Congress representatives.

This is no different than the Patriot Act after 9/11 , They scared the living out of the representatives to rush that Bill and pass it or WE WOULD BE DOOMED.....sadly they thought it would work for the 3rd time thinking its a "charm". (Patriot Act, War on Terror, ..........700B-3T $ bailout Paid by Taxpayers)

Im pissed

This is what I want to know. If this bill did happen to go through, will these banks continue to tell so many of these taxpayers that they cannot afford to have this or that because their "credit score" is not high enough? Wouldn't this bailout essentially make the average taxpayers' credit better than the financial institutions' credit themselves?

Thanks to the OP for posting the text. I clipped and saved knowing all the servers are jammed likely, avoiding the waits.

I always thought this bill was a Trojan Horse. Spin and misrepresentation and any mechanism they could shove in there so under duress we would sign our lives away. It might just be the beginning.

-777.68 Interesting number. I can't wait to see the analysis from the real people, and not the bought and owned media and Washington self serving political-corporate brown noses in the House and Senate. Not to mention the sneaky lame losers in the White House.

This bill when studied might make Pork look like Filet Mignon.

The coals have been lit and I already smell the meat burning.

ZG


[edit on 9/29/2008 by ZeroGhost]

reply to post by TXMACHINEGUNDLR

This is a myth. Democrats nor the Clinton administration created the financial instruments that were capable of the destruction we have seen in the past few weeks. Subprime mortgage derivatives, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations were not created by Democrats. These instruments were created by people like Henry Paulson who used to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and is now Secretary of Treasury as appointed by President George Bush. Those financial instruments fueled greed and criminal activity.

This partisan blaming is way off the mark. Wall Street cronies created this mess. No bill that pushed for low income housing created the environment where investment banks were so extremely leveraged.

For example, "When Bear Stearns was on the verge of collapse, it had borrowed $33 for every $1 of equity it held. When trading partners that had lent Bear the money began demanding it back, the firm’s coffers ran dangerously low." Bear Stearns and other investment banks like it were basically betting the farm on credit.

And because of credit default swaps their bets were insured against losses. Which leads us to the major problem of AIG who was the largest credit default swap partner in the world. But guess what? AIG was engaging in credit defaults itself! The insurer that was guaranteeing against bets was itself leveraging credit default swaps against the collateralized debt obligations that is was supposedly insuring! So it's no wonder everything spiraled out of control to the point that no one seems to be able to come up with a straight and comprehensible answer as to what went wrong first.

Each component from subprime mortgages, to subprime mortgage derivatives, to credit default swaps, to collateralized debt obligations played a significant role. But mainly it was the fact that investment firm after investment firm leveraged themselves to the brink of extinction. Not only couldn't subprime homeowners pay their debts because they were leveraged to the max, Bear Stearns and others like them couldn't pay their debts either for the exact same reason!

Put this partisan bickering to rest. Because if you don't, it blinds you to the facts.

reply to post by DancedWithWolves

Yes, that is the correct vote. The name you see is the official name of the proposition that was being voted on. It is given that name, because the exact same bill was to be voted on in both the House and the Senate.
The title seems strange because this bill was substituted for an old bill that had passed both houses last year, in order to get around parliamentary rules that would have delayed the introduction of the bill.


[edit on 29-9-2008 by ProfEmeritus]

reply to post by Areal51

There are other alternatives and they should be explored.

You are correct. There are other options. The real crime is that those that voted for it, as well as the MSM, don't give the American public enough credit. All day, after the vote, they kept saying that average Americans don't really understand why their bill is absolutely necessary.
I put it differently. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THIS BILL IS AS TOXIC AS THE PROBLEM THEY ARE TRYING TO FIX.
They are so arrogant, that they don't realize that many of us READ the bill, and SAW the many problems and loopholes with the bill, and the LACK of REAL protection for the taxpayer, and the average American. The REAL protection in the bill was for the Secretary of the Treasury and the crooks that want to continue business as usual, and now have to start over.

reply to post by antar


I'd be glad to tell you what I found. First, let me say that a lot of the interpretation that many of us have done over the last few days is, unfortunately scattered over several threads.
If moderators don't have a problem, I would be glad to try to gather what I found with the bill, and post it on this thread, since this is now the most logical place to put it.
Understand that this thread was not up, when many of us started to post our information. Give me a little time to get the posts copied into this thread.

Thankfully it failed to pass.

Alex

Summary # 1:
Review of the Secretary of the Treasury's ACTIONS.
In plain English:
Who will make sure that the Secretary of the Treasury is not doing anything that is dangerous, overly risky, fraudulent or suspicious?
The section that deals with that:

ESTABLISHMENT.—ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which shall be responsible for—
ESTABLISHMENT.—ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which shall be responsible for—
8 (1) reviewing the exercise of authority under a
9 program developed in accordance with this Act, in
10cluding—
11 (A) any action taken by the Secretary and
12 the Office of Financial Stability created under
13 section 101, including the appointment of finan
14cial agents, the designation of asset classes to
15 be purchased, and plans for the structure of ve
16hicles used to purchase troubled assets; and
17 (B) the effect of such actions in assisting
18 American families in preserving home owner
19ship, stabilizing financial markets, and pro
20tecting taxpayers;
21 (2) making recommendations, as appropriate, to
22 the Secretary regarding use of the authority under
23 this Act; and
24 (3) reporting any suspected fraud, misrepresen
25tation, or malfeasance to the Inspector General for
15
O:\AYO\AYO08B94.xml [Discussion Draft]
1 the Department of the Treasury or the Attorney
2 General of the United States, consistent with section
3 535(b) of title 28, United States Code.

So, in plain English, a committee, called the Financial Stability Oversight Board, will "Review" the Secretary's actions, and those of the other entities charged with carrying out the bill's charge.

Now, HERE is who is on that BOARD:

MEMBERSHIP.—The Financial Stability Over
5sight Board shall be comprised of—
6 (1) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of
7 the Federal Reserve System;
8 (2) the Secretary of the Treasury;
9 (3) the Director of the Federal Home Finance
10 Agency;
11 (4) the chairman of the Securities and Ex
12change Commission; and
13 (5) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Devel
14opment.
15 (c) CHAIRPERSON.—The chairperson of the Financial
16 Stability Oversight Board shall be elected by the members
17 of the Board from among the members.

Notice something strange? The Secretary is ON THE BOARD! Wow, what a deal. He gets to review himself. Of course, I am sure that if he is doing something fraudulent, he will report himself.LOL!
NOTICE something else. EVERYONE on the board is an INSIDER in the entire process. The Chairman of the FED- GEE, what an impartial member! NOT! All political HACKS.

I'll post this and get to work on Post # 2

Summary # 2

From Bloomberg.com:
bloomberg.com...

Treasury Gets Broad Power in Bailout Bill to Hire Contractors

By Rebecca Christie

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will have broad authority to hire financial managers quickly to help manage a $700 billion asset-purchase plan, according to the draft legislation under consideration.

The bill would allow the Treasury chief to waive federal acquisition procedures ``where compelling circumstances make compliance contrary to the public interest,'' according to a summary of the draft law. The Treasury would have to notify Congress of such waivers within seven days, and also ensure procedures are in place to reach out to minorities.

If the plan is enacted, the Treasury likely will need a lot of Wall Street expertise to manage the assets it acquires, said Tim Ryan, head of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Ryan also is former director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the Resolution Trust Corp., the agency that liquidated failed thrifts after the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

``What we learned through the RTC process is, if we're going to throw this type of assignment at the government -- any government, state, federal, U.S., anywhere -- they're not staffed to deal with this issue,'' Ryan said in an interview last week.

Treasury's potential hiring of contractors to run the program will help because ``they'll just do a better job and they'll get it done faster, and ultimately it'll be cheaper,'' Ryan said.

Paulson has already recruited from Wall Street to help manage the current financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. He hired Morgan Stanley on a $95,000 contract awarded under emergency procedures to help assess options for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that ultimately ended up in government conservatorship.

Goldman Sachs

Paulson also last week hired former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleague Edward C. Forst, now executive vice president at Harvard University, on a $5,000 contract to help with the plan.

The draft legislation would allow the Treasury to select the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as an asset manager for residential mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities. If the Treasury looks to Wall Street for other staff, it should find plenty of affordable talent, Ryan said.

``There are people in this business who know this asset class who have recently, in the last six months, lost jobs, and they'll take a lot less pay than they got the last time,'' Ryan said in the interview.

Explanation: In plain English, they are going to hire contractors to manage the assets. Guess where they are going to find them? On Wall Street, or on the UNEMPLOYMENT LINES, where all the crooks that CAUSED the original problem are, since they TANKED their FIRMS.
I don't think I have to go into any more on that. I think it is self-explanatory.

We all know what Ron Paul warned us about when he was running for President, so I don't think I need to re-post that information.
However, here is the updated link that is the full text of what he said today, and what was put into the Congressional Record, because he was not allowed time to read his entire statement:
www.campaignforliberty.com...


Let's look at the other honest candidate from the primaries, Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Here is what he had to say about the bill:

As the Wall Street bailout talks continue, a critical Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is not confident that House will pass the legislation, as he told The Hill. "If the votes were there, this would be on the floor," he said. "The votes aren't there."

"Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?" Kucinich asked today. "Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt-based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks?"

Kucinich attended a meeting of the "Skeptics Caucus," organized by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and consisting of House Democrats skeptical of the bailout effort. The meeting's speakers included economic professor James Galbraith of the University of Texas and former FDIC chairman William Isaac. Sherman called the legislation a Bush administration "power grab" and a handout to Wall Street. "This is greatest shift of power to the imperial presidency and the greatest shift of wealth to a still wealthy Wall Street that anyone could imagine," Sherman said.

"None of this has been subject to a critical analysis," charged Rep. Kucinich. "We haven't had access to the books to the people who are claiming they are going broke."

"They rushed this Congress into the Iraq resolution and look what happened," he added, comparing the rushed tone behind the bailout effort with the push to invade Iraq, "Catastrophe for this nation as well as for the people of Iraq."

"The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street is driven by fear, not fact," Kucinich said on the House floor Sunday. "This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?"

Finally, back in February, I posted a new thread entitled:
Have the Banks Shot Thomas Jefferson in the back?
Here is the link:
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Here is what I said:

Last year, ONE MILLION Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. This year, the number is expected to skyrocket. See this link:

Last year, ONE MILLION Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. This year, the number is expected to skyrocket. See this link:
ezinearticles.com...

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

The private banks (The Federal Reserve) have precipitated this. Not only is it destroying American homes and families and our economy, it will bring down the entire global economy.

Now, I'm not saying I'm such as genius, but if I could see this coming back in February, don't you THINK MAYBE someone other than Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul might have figured this out?
There are only TWO possible answers to that question.
Answer # 1: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Sen. Pelosi, et al. DID NOT SEE IT COMING. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE PRETTY DUMB, AND SHOULDN'T BE TRYING TO COME UP WITH A PLAN TO GET US OUT OF THIS MESS.

Answer #2: They DID see it coming, AND THEY DID NOTHING, ALLOWING THE PROBLEM TO GET WORSE AND WORSE.

IF #2 is the ANSWER, then we have an even bigger problem. It's called CONSPIRACY- TO HIDE THIS FROM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, AND THEY BELONG IN JAIL.

In summary, they are either stupid or crooked. In either case, they should NOT be trying to ramrod a bad fix down OUR THROATS.






[edit on 29-9-2008 by ProfEmeritus]

Here is some very new interesting information:
www.bloomberg.com...

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

``Today's blast of term liquidity will settle the funding markets down, and allow trust to slowly be restored between borrowers and lenders,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. On the other hand, ``the Fed's balance sheet is about to explode.''

Oh wait. The sponsors of the bill said THAT UNLESS THE BILL WAS PASSED, THERE COULD BE NOTHING ELSE THAT COULD CALM THE MARKETS:
Read the last paragraph above very carefully.
The sponsors of the bill said that there was NO MORE CREDIT TO BE GIVEN OUT.
Now, here is the real scivy: The credit market dried up THE DAY PAULSON announced his plan. The banks saw that this was a way to get the $700 billion from the taxpayers, so they FROZE LENDING, to put pressure on the passage of the bill! I Guarantee that is WHAT happened!
Of course, this means that our dollar is worth less again. So why did they even bother to put this bill up, when they are able to get $630 billion from the FED?
I think I already answered that.

A leading economist explains why the bailout bill was a BAD idea, and why bankruptcy is better:
www.cnn.com...
Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan. Here is what he has to say:

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.