Market Manipulation Club

The Treasury will pay financial institutions above-market prices for garbage assets nobody else wants.

Then, through the magic of mark-to-Paulson accounting, everybody else that owns similar stuff will use those same prices,

or marks, to value the trash on their own balance sheets. Shazam! Banks and insurance companies write up the asset values on their books.

They post big profits. Their capital goes up. Everyone gets fooled. And nobody knows the difference.

the Treasury would be spending as much as $700 billion getting us right back where we started.

And a lot of Wall Street charlatans who should lose their shirts would expand their fortunes, which is politically and morally untenable.

Hattip To Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg

The Nattering One muses.. Mark to Paulson is a horrible fantasy, which won't work...

this is nothing more than an extension of the world's largest pawn shop. But, remember...

the first rule of market manipulation club is you don't talk about market manipulation club.

Interested codicil: the brokers and bankers stood by and collected trillions in transaction fees for housing loans, MBS and speculation on oil, wheat, corn, etc.

Now that THEIR OWN stocks are getting the short treatment, just like a trust fund child who wrecks their Ferrari,

and acting like the little spoiled crybaby bitches they are, the financiers have come crying to Mommy for another handout. Just say no!

Housing, energy & food were artificially raised to unjustifed levels with no ban on speculation. Yet, the single justified short in this market,

the financials, being grossly overvalued and fraudulently overstated are banned from shorting? Perverted and ironic, isn't it?

The real irony is that McCain and those of his ilk will claim and pretend not to be ultra rich, nor Republican.

These are the same kind of people that are JUDAS and addict like in their denials. McCain wants to suspend the campaign due to the economy?

Sounds like a well grounded idea; perhaps like Hitler, Castro and Caesar, he can suspend the elections and democracy as well. WTF???

Since the ultra rich have PROVED they are a moral less pack of greedy bastards and liars...

which can't run this country and can only RUIN it, isn't it time that we make them sit in the corner and tax them accordingly?

These moralistic whiny little shit asses have left a horrible mess for us to clean up, and they should man up or get out. Rather than bailouts and handouts,

we should discipline these misbehaving children by imposing a supplemental graduated flat tax on the rich to help defray the cost of cleaning up their crap.

Perhaps 2.5% on income above $150K; 5% above $250K; 10% above $500K; and 20% above $1 Million.

Much more civil than asset confiscation or the guillotine, don't you think? Perhaps a spay & neuter alternative should be considered?

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