Republican balls

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Las Vegas
Courtesy of Iñigo Biain

Man, o’man, o’man, I’ve got to hand it to them, the some republicans have titanium balls, they started with a pretty large sum, $700 billion, but now, they’re asking you and me to take out of these clowns’ hands the potential risk of the whole $62 trillion insured debt (or credit default swaps).

As reported by Reuters:

On Thursday, a small group of conservative House Republicans —
including Texas’ Jeb Hensarling and Virginia’s Eric Cantor — offered
their own alternative to the Bush proposal. Focused on mortgage
insurance, the one-page alternative plan was presented to reporters at
a briefing.

The plan calls for the U.S. government to offer
insurance coverage for the roughly half of all mortgage-backed
securities that it does not already insure. The Treasury Department
would charge premiums to holders of the securities, under the plan.

Let me see,

  • pay outright $700,000,000,000 or assume the risk of a debt default worth $62,000,000,000,000?
  • or approximately $2,100, versus risking $186,000 for each one of the 300+ million US citizens.

Gee, when did Las Vegas take over the whole USA?

Now, this sounds like repeating the original sin over and over again, which is buying paper whose value the buyer cannot be certain of, because he is too far removed from the transaction. Worse, because it’s not whether he can’t tell that these clients are healthy or not, he’s positively insuring clients that are sick, because that’s the reason banks want to get rid of these default debt policies, in the first place.

It’s like a Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae nightmare all over again, but to a much larger extent –we keep on buying tainted goods to infinity, close to $62 trillion, in my world anyhow.

Just have them guarantee that they will pay back every penny spent –that’s all.
Nationalize if you have to.