60 Minutes with Ben Bernanke

When he was asked “why” are you appearing for an interview, Ben (may I call you Ben?) responded… “These are unusual times!”. Ferderal Reserve Chiefs never give interviews, so Yes, it is an extraordinary time.

He also said it gave him the chance to speak directly to the American People. I, on the other hand, have to blog in order to gain such hope, that anyone wants to really hear anything I have to say. So, you go Ben…

Oh, hey since I’ve got you on the show, do you mind if I ask you an unrehearsed question? “Why are you still ignoring the Mortgage Securities issue. The fact that all these banks are still hiding the amount and real values of all these, “what does wall street call them?”, oh yeah! Toxic Assets. If my memory serves me, you did the same thing in the beginning as the foreclosures began in late 07, and had these results. Weird, so…

Now you go on 60 minutes and tell the AMerican People that the probl;em with the financial system is the financial system, sell us on further bailout “political will”, while you continue to ignore what still seems to have no answer. Nice…

Well here’s my opinion, and you can put this on 60 Minutes!).. Take the paper from the banks as collateral, let them value it as they like and we’ll loan’em the dough. Then! We take all this paper and assemble a crack team of trackers and those ladies that do all those puzzles in the kitchen, and find the missing real estate. Put all those rotten piece of collateral into nice easy to manage mortgages. Then return the assessed value in real estate back to the bank. Once the debts are reassembled, as mortgages, they will have a very clear value and other banks will know for a fact that there books are clean.

Or, come up with something else that doesn’t involve giving the banks more money without a plan to resolve the real issue! It’s the paper that got us here… Come on, Ben!

Risky Business: Playing the Blame Game

It really seems like Congress is spending more time worrying about how to avoid any direct responsibility for the Subprime Mortgage Scandal as they work out the details of a Mortgage Bailout Bill, then taking the time to look at lawmakers shortcomings in what has always been a highly regulated industry.

When Senators, like McCain, sight the fault in the pitfalls of housing prices as the irresponsibilities of buyers, when it was the Mortgage industries themselves who were required to investigate the details of the contracts, for indiscretions in the facts like income and assets, it leaves us all feeling a little cheated.

Now Congress is going to put the ‘Keepers of Mortgages’ at risk in order to NOT use tax payers money to solve the problem, requiring Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to flip the bill for the Bailout.

This will put a something like $7 Trillion safety net at risk for the tune of $280 billion worth of trouble, while the Fed freely loans the banks an unlimited amount of money just to keep them alive and loaning, regardless of their risky loaning practices.

This entire outcome could have been avoided had the Fed put their initial efforts into nipping the entire thing in the bud by shelling out the 200 Billion, they force fed the banks, directly to the families and individuals who got caught up in the Subprime loaning frenzy. It would have halted the collapse and allowed the banks to recover on their own and kept the lid on inflation by slowing down spending as the banks sought to recover liquidity.

Instead Bernanke denied any risk (from the fallout) to the economy until it hit the front pages of the Media, making the Fed look like a nervous investor holding penny stocks instead of the reigns of the economy.

The problem with delay in the Fed’s actions is that the limited tools available to them have put inflation at a roar and the Dollar in the drain, sending investors into Oil, Gold, and Food Commodities which are spiraling out of control and stoking inflation like a billow, while the Labor Department feeds us huge lies like the price of Gas actually fell in May by 0.2 percent after it was “adjusted for demand”. WTF…

Everything these geniuses are doing now are insane if you ask me, like they want to help create the biggest collapse ever just to make the history books. The only problem is that there wont be any paper left by the time its over if we stay the course on this, let alone a printer…

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