The Republican Thread

[kapkomet]

He is Jesus.

Please don't go there. There's a difference between calling him "the Messiah" and calling him "Jesus".

Edited April 17, 2009 by kapkomet

[lostfan]

Please don't go there.

I figure the sarcasm/facetiousness here was heavy enough.

[kapkomet]

I figure the sarcasm/facetiousness here was heavy enough.

I know, but ... I'll stop there.

 

[lostfan]

Point taken, no more losterbole from me.

[kapkomet]

Point taken, no more losterbole from me.

 

You know, I'm so glad that Kaperbole ™ just becomes the way we roll around here.

 

The comment really isn't about you, per se. I know what you meant.

 

[southsider2k5]

He is Jesus.

 

At least he isn't bigger than Jesus...

[Rex Kickass]

At least he isn't bigger than Jesus...

Only the Beatles can claim that.

[southsider2k5]

Only the Beatles can claim that.

 

I was hoping a Lennon fan would come along

[Rex Kickass]

I was hoping a Lennon fan would come along

Imagine that. Well, I was Watching The Wheels spin by and decided to spout off some Instant Karma.

 

Anyway, time for lunch. Today I'm Giving Peas A Chance.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

 

Treasury Seeks to Keep U.S. Bank Stakes After Buyback (Update2)

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By Rebecca Christie

 

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Treasury intends to retain an ownership interest in many U.S. banks even after the lenders buy back preferred stock the government currently holds as part of its rescue effort.

 

The government will continue to hold warrants, attached to every capital injection it has made, even after any share buybacks, Treasury officials said on condition of anonymity. Banks seeking to escape the government’s grip want to retire the warrants -- which give the right to buy stock in the future at a preset price -- at the same time they acquire the government- owned preferred shares.

 

The officials said the U.S. would give up the warrants only after subsequent talks with appraisers and the banks to agree on a price. As long as the warrants remain, lenders would continue to face some federal constraints, including limits on hiring non-American citizens, the officials said. Lenders would be freed of restrictions on executive pay and dividends, they said.

 

“When this program was created, everything was done so fast, I don’t think people were contemplating they would be exiting this quickly,” said Diane Casey-Landry, chief operating officer of the American Bankers Association.

 

Escalating federal demands on the banks have spurred institutions including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to seek an early exit from the Treasury’s rescue program. The warrants issue may be the latest complication in a $700 billion effort to unfreeze credit that has sparked an outcry among both lawmakers and some bankers.

 

Toxic-Debt Funds

 

Most of the funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program distributed so far have been used for buying stakes in financial companies. Warrants apply to all elements of TARP, and officials are still wrestling with how to include them in their plan to finance purchases of distressed assets.

 

Treasury representatives are working with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and potential participants in the toxic- debt programs on how to apply the warrants requirement.

 

Lawmakers pressed for warrants in the TARP law enacted in October as a way for taxpayers to benefit from future profits of companies getting help. When exercised, the government can buy newly issued shares from the company at a pre-determined price.

 

It’s unclear how much the warrants may be worth and valuing them may prove contentious. Bankers said the warrants, under current market conditions, may turn out to be expensive for those looking to exit the rescue programs quickly.

 

‘Payday Lender’

 

“If you look at the cost of those warrants and turn it into an annual percentage rate, it’s enormous,” said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America. “It almost makes the Treasury look like a payday lender.”

 

Financial shares have rallied in the past month on signs that the industry’s performance improved in the first quarter. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index has soared 88 percent from its low of 78.45 on March 6, closing at 147.28 yesterday. That’s still down 71 percent from the high reached in May 2007.

 

Futures on the S&P 500 index were little changed at 861.2 just before the open at 9:27 a.m. in New York.

 

Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said in an April 14 interview that “there’s a prescribed process for how you do it -- where you propose a price, they accept or not, you negotiate and then you hire appraisers and come up with an agreed-upon valuation.”

 

“We’ll figure it out, we don’t know” the cost, Viniar said. Goldman Sachs raised $5 billion this week in a share sale in order to help pay back the $10 billion it took from the government in October.

 

‘Scarlet Letter’

 

JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said April 16 his firm could repay U.S. government rescue funds “tomorrow.” He called the receipt of the $25 billion in TARP money last year “a scarlet letter.”

 

JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti declined to comment on the warrants.

 

For the top 19 banks, any TARP repayments will have to wait until after the so-called stress tests conclude, a Treasury official said. U.S. regulators are reviewing the biggest banks to gauge whether they have enough capital to survive a deeper economic slowdown. A Federal Reserve official said yesterday that the results are planned for release May 4.

 

To repay, a bank must apply to the Treasury. The request then goes to the bank’s regulators, who review the soundness of the institution. If the bank is deemed in good shape, it’s allowed to buy out the government stake.

 

Some smaller banks are already in the process of repaying their TARP funds. Of the six who have repaid so far, five have outstanding warrants that need to be addressed.

 

To contact the reporters on this story: Rebecca Christie in Washington at [email protected];

[southsider2k5]

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/arti...px?RsrcID=46786

 

Treasury Allows New Bank to Return TARP Funds, Keeps Other Bank Waiting

Friday, April 17, 2009

By Matt Cover

 

 

Treasury Department Secretary Timothy Geithner (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) – While the Treasury Department is allowing another bank to return money loaned to it under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it is still keeping one institution – TCF Financial – in the lurch, declining to tell it or CNSNews.com why it has taken more than the required 30 days to process the money-return request.

 

The bank allowed to return funds, Shore Bancshares of Easton, Md. will repay its $25 million taxpayer loan Thursday, bank CEO Moorhead Vermilye told CNSNews.com. Shore wanted to return the money because it felt persecuted by Congress and the administration, said Vermilye.

 

“We have heard, we got approved, we’re paying it back today,” said Vermilye. The biggest reason for returning the funds, he said, was the public perception that the banks taking TARP money were weak banks that were getting bailed out.

 

“Number two, they [Treasury] changed the rules after the game had started and made the rules retroactive,” said Vernilye. “The basic feeling was that Congress might change these rules anytime they felt like changing them.”

 

TCF Financial, based in Wayzata, Minn., also thinks that Congress has changed the rules and would like to return taxpayers’ money as soon as possible. However, according to TCF spokesman Jason Korstange, the Treasury Department has not approved the return yet, nor have they told TCF why they are taking so long.

 

“Not yet, we’re hoping to hear any minute, any day,” Korstange told CNSNews.com. “We have not heard back. We have certainly talked to them, but we haven’t received an answer yet.”

 

Korstange said that Treasury had not provided a reason for the delay, but noted that TCF had given Treasury everything it asked for.

 

“No reasons,” he said. “We’ve given them a lot of information, any information they ask for, any information we thought was necessary.”

 

Korstange explained that Treasury had originally invited TCF to apply for TARP funds, saying it wanted the participation of healthy banks to mitigate the shock to the financial system from the failure of large firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

 

TCF agreed, wanting to do its civic duty by aiding the government in keeping the nation’s hobbled financial industry going.

 

“They came to all the banks,” said Korstange. “They did come to us and suggested that it would be a good idea, that if you didn’t take it you would be looked on as a bank that couldn’t get it, that you were too bad to get it.

 

“It made sense to do it at that time. We thought we were being good citizens. We didn’t need the money,” Korstange added.

 

The $700-billion TARP was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush last fall.

 

The law says that the Treasury Secretary "is authorized to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or ‘TARP’) to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, troubled assets from any financial institution, on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary, and in accordance with this Act and the policies and procedures developed and published by the Secretary. ...

 

“The term ‘financial institution’ means any institution, including, but not limited to, any bank, savings association, credit union, security broker or dealer, or insurance company, established and regulated under the laws of the United States or any State, territory, or possession of the United States ...."

 

Korstange said that changing the rules of TARP and demonizing banks that participate in it ultimately hurts the government’s own efforts, because the TARP program is the best recovery program the government is offering.

 

“It’s the best thing the government has going for it right now, as a matter of fact, [because] it’s not given to the bank, it’s a loan,” Korstange told CNSNews.com. “We’re paying dividends on it. They’re getting 5 percent. To be perceived as this ogre that’s out there gobbling up all this tax money is just wrong.”

 

That negative perception, fueled by the actions of both the Obama administration and Congress, pushed TCF to get out of TARP. Korstange said that when the government decided it could tell banks how to do business, it had gone too far.

 

“Because of that perception, and the general acceptance of it, now the Congress in its wisdom has decided how to run banks, and given us a whole list of things that you can and cannot do if you’ve got the TARP money,” he said.

 

“We anticipate that

to get larger and larger and we’d just like to get out and just run our bank,” said Korstange. “We don’t want to cause any problems – we just want to run our bank the way we want to run our bank.”

 

The delay in processing TCF’s request is strange, because one of the changes Congress made to the TARP program was a provision that banks that wanted to return the money could do so without raising 25 percent of the original loan amount as originally required.

 

Instead, all a bank had to do was apply to return taxpayers’ money and wait 30 days while Treasury reviewed the bank’s fiscal health. After 30 days, Treasury is supposed to make a decision. However, TCF’s application has been pending since March 2 – a period of 45 days.

 

“The rule was that they would have 30 days, and it’s now 45 days. We got to the 30 days, and we were asking, ‘Hey, we want to pay it back,’ and they just said they needed more time. They don’t even abide by their own rules,” said Korstange.

 

When asked by CNSNews.com the status of applications by TCF Financial and Shore Bancshares to return their TARP funds, Treasury Department spokesman Andrew Williams replied in an e-mail that the department does not provide status reports.

[southsider2k5]

I wonder when the White House will start attacking Paul Krugman...

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodg...pression-2009-4

 

Green Shoots and Glimmers

 

So is it time to sound the all clear? Here are four reasons to be cautious about the economic outlook.

 

1. Things are still getting worse. Industrial production just hit a 10-year low. Housing starts remain incredibly weak. Foreclosures, which dipped as mortgage companies waited for details of the Obama administration’s housing plans, are surging again.

 

The most you can say is that there are scattered signs that things are getting worse more slowly — that the economy isn’t plunging quite as fast as it was. And I do mean scattered: the latest edition of the Beige Book, the Fed’s periodic survey of business conditions, reports that “five of the twelve Districts noted a moderation in the pace of decline.” Whoopee.

 

2. Some of the good news isn’t convincing. The biggest positive news in recent days has come from banks, which have been announcing surprisingly good earnings. But some of those earnings reports look a little ... funny.

 

Wells Fargo, for example, announced its best quarterly earnings ever. But a bank’s reported earnings aren’t a hard number, like sales; for example, they depend a lot on the amount the bank sets aside to cover expected future losses on its loans. And some analysts expressed considerable doubt about Wells Fargo’s assumptions, as well as other accounting issues.

 

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs announced a huge jump in profits from fourth-quarter 2008 to first-quarter 2009. But as analysts quickly noticed, Goldman changed its definition of “quarter” (in response to a change in its legal status), so that — I kid you not — the month of December, which happened to be a bad one for the bank, disappeared from this comparison.

 

I don’t want to go overboard here. Maybe the banks really have swung from deep losses to hefty profits in record time. But skepticism comes naturally in this age of Madoff.

 

Oh, and for those expecting the Treasury Department’s “stress tests” to make everything clear: the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, says that “you will see in a systematic and coordinated way the transparency of determining and showing to all involved some of the results of these stress tests.” No, I don’t know what that means, either.

 

3. There may be other shoes yet to drop. Even in the Great Depression, things didn’t head straight down. There was, in particular, a pause in the plunge about a year and a half in — roughly where we are now. But then came a series of bank failures on both sides of the Atlantic, combined with some disastrous policy moves as countries tried to defend the dying gold standard, and the world economy fell off another cliff.

 

Can this happen again? Well, commercial real estate is coming apart at the seams, credit card losses are surging and nobody knows yet just how bad things will get in Japan or Eastern Europe. We probably won’t repeat the disaster of 1931, but it’s far from certain that the worst is over.

 

4. Even when it’s over, it won’t be over. The 2001 recession officially lasted only eight months, ending in November of that year. But unemployment kept rising for another year and a half. The same thing happened after the 1990-91 recession. And there’s every reason to believe that it will happen this time too. Don’t be surprised if unemployment keeps rising right through 2010.

 

Why? “V-shaped” recoveries, in which employment comes roaring back, take place only when there’s a lot of pent-up demand. In 1982, for example, housing was crushed by high interest rates, so when the Fed eased up, home sales surged. That’s not what’s going on this time: today, the economy is depressed, loosely speaking, because we ran up too much debt and built too many shopping malls, and nobody is in the mood for a new burst of spending.

 

Employment will eventually recover — it always does. But it probably won’t happen fast.

 

So now that I’ve got everyone depressed, what’s the answer? Persistence.

 

History shows that one of the great policy dangers, in the face of a severe economic slump, is premature optimism. F.D.R. responded to signs of recovery by cutting the Works Progress Administration in half and raising taxes; the Great Depression promptly returned in full force. Japan slackened its efforts halfway through its lost decade, ensuring another five years of stagnation.

 

The Obama administration’s economists understand this. They say all the right things about staying the course. But there’s a real risk that all the talk of green shoots and glimmers will breed a dangerous complacency.

 

So here’s my advice, to the public and policy makers alike: Don’t count your recoveries before they’re hatched.

[BearSox]

 

Awww... that's cute!

[kapkomet]

The Kumbaya Tour Starring Barack Obama.

 

 

 

[BigSqwert]

 

Awww... that's cute!

 

 

 

 

How many nuclear warheads were aimed at the U.S. when Ford shook hands with Brezhnev? 15,000? How many are aimed at us from Chavez? 0?

 

 

[BearSox]

Those are cute as well!

[ChiSox_Sonix]

 

Awww... that's cute!

 

 

The name of the book Chavez gave to Obama?

 

"Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano, which blames foreign interests like the United States for exploiting Latin America for centuries.

 

[lostfan]

That really sounds like something Chavez would do.

[BigSqwert]

WTF?

 

[kapkomet]

 

Damn that's weird.

[BigSqwert]

 

Damn that's weird.

Excellent use of campaign funds.

[lostfan]

I keep reading about interrogation techniques, which if not secret are at the very least not supposed to be discussed in public, and it's starting to piss me off.

[Balta1701]

I keep reading about interrogation techniques, which if not secret are at the very least not supposed to be discussed in public, and it's starting to piss me off.

Then they ought to follow the damn law with them.

[lostfan]

Then they ought to follow the damn law with them.

If he's not going to prosecute, then why put the spotlight on it? We already know there was some bad legal advice given adn that some people broke the law but for some reason the actual techniques are being released to the public and given unnecessary attention. There is a reason this kind of stuff is not discussed in public, because politicians (regardless of party affiliation) have no f***ing clue when it comes to security unless it pertains directly to them, and they like to exaggerate and grandstand to score political points. The last time this happened on a large scale was following the Nixon administration, and the result from the Congressional investigations that followed was to neuter the effectiveness of the IC which didn't get addressed for several years, in the Reagan administration. Before that, you had Dewey trying to put Truman on blast over the Soviets that would've compromised operations they had going then, and before that you had Justice Roberts (not John Roberts obviously) on the Supreme Court writing an opinion in a SCOTUS decision that interception of foreign communications was illegal. lol, good thing nobody listened to that because if they did, California would be part of the Japanese Empire.

[Balta1701]

If he's not going to prosecute, then why put the spotlight on it?

Because he was ordered to release the specific documents in question by a court. The ACLU filed a legal FOIA request for those documents, several courts had ruled against both of the last 2 administrations requiring their release, and last week, the day they were released, was the deadline set by the court.

 

He'd have had to violate a court order to avoid releasing them. There was no legal option left.