The Market Ticker

Pretty self-explanatory....

Don't sign the petition, watch your mortgage rates shoot the moon.

This move is just on the threat.  If the bailout actually happens....

http://financialpetition.org

So here comes Hank Paulson essentially "demanding" that Congress pass the very bill that I have been "on" about, and against, since it first reared its ugly head, and especially the provisions regarding "bailing out" Fannie and Freddie.

Folks, you need to head over to http://financialpetition.org here and now.  Today.  This legislation must be stopped!

Hank is once again claiming that US Economic Fundamentals "are strong" and "the banking system is sound." Uh huh.  I'm the Easter Bunny.  Promise.  I really mean it.

Why does Paulson keep telling us that the banking system is sound?  Over and over again, every time that bastard gets within 200' of a microphone?

Maybe it is because the banking system is on the verge of all-out collapse, and he knows you could blow it over with a feather!

Fanie and Freddie are "vital" to US markets and housing?  They are?  In their bloated, over-levered and IMHO dangerous form? 

The Bush Administration and Congress created this monstrous cock-up through refusing to regulate these firms, allowing them to spend $200 million in lobbying to stifle any sort of meaningful regulation, expanding their balance sheets to an outrageous degree, even after they were both caught up in accounting scandals in the 2003-2004 time frame, and we are now told we must cover it with taxpayer money.

BALONEY.

These firms must not be supported by taxpayer dollars.  Their debt offerings all clearly disclose that they have no federal guarantee. 

These firms have enjoyed the ability to "out-bid" other private mortgage funding and even buy their own securities, layering debt upon debt, as a direct result of the fact that our government has refused to properly regulate these firms leverage ratios and risk exposure.

Over 600 petition signatures have been sent already.  We need to see 60,000 of them, in the next few days, along with the flooding of Congressional switchboards, or this legislation will almost certainly pass.

There is no good outcome that can be obtained from passage of this legislation.  None.  Fannie and Freddie now have bank examiners in their offices.  Will we, the people, get to see the results of those examinations before any bailout is passed?  Of course not.  We probably won't get to look at the results after they are passed either.

Why not?

We're being asked to take the risk on the public balance sheet but we can't see, in advance, what we're being asked to take on?

That's wrong. 

Period.

We cannot continue to play on borrowed time - literally - through creating more and more debt.  Defaults are and will continue to accelerate because we have gone too far, and this debt must be unwound.

Banks are under extraordinary stress. Wachovia reported a nearly NINE BILLION DOLLAR loss this morning.

We still have not seen the banks "come clean." 

The regulators and policymakers have, to this day, failed to force these institutions to tell the truth, and now we are seeing the results.  Instead of forcing deleveraging on the investment and commercial banks since last summer, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke continue to speak that "banks and other institutions are well-capitalized", yet they didn't even have IndyMac on the watch list of troubled banks in the days before it failed!

Our government has continued to play "confidence games" with the American People instead of giving us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The opportunity to stop this bill - potentially, the triggering event for a cascade of unintended side effects that put our financial system and economy at risk - is about to expire.

Act today.

Go to http://financialpetition.org/

Then, after you've signed and confirmed, Call Congress.

And when you're done, head over to http://fedupusa.org and consider showing up in Washington DC on the 31st.

Citizenship in this nation is is not a spectator sport, and our representative government demands participation through peaceful protest and demonstration when the line of reasonable conduct by our officials has been, or is about to be, crossed.