Gotta love this………

Mr Fuld, who has been testifying on the financial crisis before the US House Oversight Committee, was attacked on a Sunday shortly after it was announced that the banking giant was bankrupt.

Following rumours that the incident had occurred, Vicki Ward, a US journalist, said “two very senior sources - one incredibly senior source” had confirmed it to her. “He went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under,” she told CNBC. “He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold.

“And frankly after having watched [Mr Fuld's testimony to the committee], I’d have done the same too.”

“I thought he was shameless … I thought it was appalling. He blamed everyone … He blamed everybody but himself.”

More at the Telegraph

The stock market opened 200 and some points down at the bell……after the Fed and six major banks around the world cut the interest rate overnight by half a point.

So many people 55-65 have been totally fucked after putting money into retirement accounts for years. I know MANY who planned on retiring in the next few years and now they can’t. So unfair. I’d like to know who in congress knew what, Democrat or Republican, and get rid of them. What a huge slap to the American people who have worked hard and saved for their golden years, only to watch it disappear. I wouldn’t wish death on anybody…..but I sure have visions of Wallstreet suits like Paulson, Gramm, Greenspan, Bernake and that dickwad from Lehman jumping. And while they’re at it, I’m sure there’s some politicians from both sides of the aisle they could take with them.

Americans’ retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress’ top budget analyst estimated Tuesday. The upheaval that has engulfed the financial industry and sent the stock market plummeting is devastating workers’ savings, forcing people to hold off on major purchases and consider delaying their retirement, said Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office.

As Congress investigates the causes and effects of the financial meltdown, the House Education and Labor Committee was hearing from retirement savings and budget analysts on how the housing, credit and other financial troubles have battered pensions and other retirement funds, which are among the most common forms of savings in the United States.

“Unlike Wall Street executives, America’s families don’t have a golden parachute to fall back on,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the panel chairman. “It’s clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis.”

More at Yahoo News

Yahoo! Alerts Yahoo! News - My Alerts - Edit Alert
Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 10:08 AM PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) Bernanke: Financial crisis “has worsened” outlook for economic growth, weakness could persist.

All that screaming, name-calling and gnashing of teeth… and they had an even better plan waiting in the wings.

Does this mean we get that $700-billion bailout hijack fund back?

Business loan bailout

Federal Reserve aims to unfreeze credit markets by buying loans crucial to business.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Federal Reserve announced a new program to help the battered market for short-term business loans - taking its closest step yet to lending directly to businesses.

The program addresses commercial paper, a form of short-term funding that is crucial to many businesses operations.

In the past month, the amount of money outstanding in commercial paper loans has fallen 11% to $1.6 trillion on Oct. 1 from $1.82 trillion on Sept. 10. Since much of the paper that was outstanding at the start of the credit crisis is now coming up for renewal, there were fears that it could drop even more sharply in the weeks to come without some drastic improvement in the market.

Under the program announced Tuesday morning, the Fed will purchase three-month unsecured and asset-backed commercial paper directly from eligible issuers. The program is slated to expire in April 2009 and will have financial support from taxpayers.

“The Treasury believes this facility is necessary to prevent substantial disruptions to the financial markets and the economy and will make a special deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in support of this facility,” said the Fed’s statement.

I wish Congress was close friends of mine!

Bailout is law

President Bush signs historic $700 billion plan aimed at stemming credit crisis.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — After two weeks of contentious and often emotional debate, the federal government’s far-reaching and historic plan to bail out the nation’s financial system was signed into law by President Bush on Friday afternoon.

“By coming together on this legislation, we have acted boldly to prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country,” Bush said less than an hour after the House voted 263 to 171 to pass the bill.

Video: Dennis Kucinich bailout speech on the floor of the house 10/02/08

There are many reasons this bill bothers me. The problem is, I, like most Americans and most the people in congress, don’t have a clue what’s right, what’s not right as far as fixing this disaster. I have the utmost respect for this guy. If he says it’s bullshit, I have to believe he’s telling the truth. I don’t know if this bill will actually help anything. I only hope it helps keep every day people from losing any more of their retirement funds….. small and mid size businesses keeping afloat……keeping people from losing their jobs. Will it do that? I guess time will tell.

Bush speech on bailout 10/02/08

Bailout bill just passed in the Senate. Now off to the House of Representatives.

Yea 74
Nay 25

The Senate has tweeked the bailout bill a little and plans on voting tonight. Obama and McCain will return to D.C. for the vote. I fear they are going to pass this plan and we’re still going down. We’ll see. I know people who have lost $70,000 to $100,000 on their 401ks. Sad.

Video: Dennis Kucinich on the Rachel Maddow Show 9/30/08 talking bailout.

From TPM (great post at link)

McCain takes hit from bailout collapse

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The House’s failure to pass a $700 billion bailout package Monday not only held back billions for Wall Street, but also was a major blow to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.

“Even before the House vote, voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the crisis. Then McCain suspended his campaign to come back to Washington to rally support for a rescue plan,” said Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst. “He failed, so he gets blamed by both supporters and opponents of the rescue plan.”

During a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, McCain appeared to distance himself from Monday’s House vote, saying the congressional inaction had “every American and the entire economy at the gravest risk.”

“Yesterday, the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed,” he said.

I am so not knowledgeable about financial crap. I’ve been reading this morning about CDS, and this is some scary shit.

As Congress wrestles with another bailout bill to try to contain the financial contagion, there’s a potential killer bug out there whose next movement can’t be predicted: the Credit Default Swap.

In just over a decade these privately traded derivatives contracts have ballooned from nothing into a $54.6 trillion market. CDS are the fastest-growing major type of financial derivatives. More important, they’ve played a critical role in the unfolding financial crisis. First, by ostensibly providing “insurance” on risky mortgage bonds, they encouraged and enabled reckless behavior during the housing bubble.

“If CDS had been taken out of play, companies would’ve said, ‘I can’t get this [risk] off my books,’” says Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and former director of trading and markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “If they couldn’t keep passing the risk down the line, those guys would’ve been stopped in their tracks. The ultimate assurance for issuing all this stuff was, ‘It’s insured.’”

Second, terror at the potential for a financial Ebola virus radiating out from a failing institution and infecting dozens or hundreds of other companies - all linked to one another by CDS and other instruments - was a major reason that regulators stepped in to bail out Bear Stearns and buy out AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), whose calamitous descent itself was triggered by losses on its CDS contracts (see “Hank’s Last Stand”).

More at CNN Money

MCCAIN, GRAMM AND CDS

MORE ONPHIL “NATION OF WHINERS” GRAMM AND CDSs

Before the election of 2000 was even decided, Bush was already moving in to the White House. Nerve? Yes. Gall? Yes.

That’s the same nerve and gall we’re seeing in mavericky John McCain here:

McCain urges Treasury Department to take action

DES MOINES, Iowa - Republican presidential nominee John McCain is urging the Treasury Department to intervene aggressively to limit damage from the financial meltdown, action that McCain says President Bush can take with the stroke of a pen.

Opening a business round-table Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain said he has urged the Treasury to use its exchange stabilization fund “as creatively as possible” to backstop the market crisis. He says officials also should use the authority granted in a housing bill to purchase up to a trillion dollars in mortgages.

McCain decried the defeat of the financial bailout measure in the House, and he warned that the nation’s political leaders will have to take risks even though solutions to the crisis may be unpopular.

The man does not know what he’s doing.

(HT: Bat)