Congressional Leaders Stunned

[Bart]

We've touched on this before, but we should probably be much more concerned. This is scary. Any financial wizards here?


http://206.41.117.128/showthread.php?t=80255


September 20, 2008

Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON â€â€￾ 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.


Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


"When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional leaders were told "that we're literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally."

Mr. Schumer added, "History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment."

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as "somber," Mr. Dodd cut in. "Somber doesn't begin to justify the words," he said. "We have never heard language like this."

"What you heard last evening," he added, "is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly." (snip)

 

[Observer]

Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill... "that we're literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally." 

Bernanke and Paulson should be jailed, because they just pleaded guilty to running a scam, and their predecessors should be posthumously hanged. How can an economic system have a "complete meltdown" unless it was not first a sham? Did not these men have a singularly large hand in the guidance of this system?

But then again, who is really surprised? The timing is maybe a little surpriing, but one could see this coming on for years.

Even if this matter of debt capitalism is somehow resolved through a kind of fascist alliance between the national government and private corporations (which a segment of the population seems to be demanding), there still exists a kind of unnatural economy. I blame some of this on the tax-deferred retirement plans which shifted wealth to the publicly traded companies on the east and west coasts rather than to your nephew's or brother-in-law's small business.Edited by: Observer

 

[Charlie]

Bernanke's area of expertise is the Great Depression. So no doubt he had lots of grim stories for the children.

No matter what happens (LTCM, S&Ls, Mexico default threat, dot.com bust) there's a bailout or an intervention or a slashing of the Fed rate. The trick is to sell it to the rubes.

'We've got problems and we have to cut back and turn down the thermostat and wear sweaters and pay off our debts and live like freaking paupers.', is not going to cut it. Americans want to live! They want to eat the bon bons and the fried chicken!