Stock market: Apparently the Republicans were right

[nichomachus]

You can't solve a problem by throwing money at it.

Market is tanking again today, despite $700-billion in corporate welfare.

For years, the GOP has been shrieking that "you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it." But, when they get in a little hot water, they start flinging taxpayer money around like it's toilet paper -- oh, wait a minute, it is, thanks to Bush.

[gratuitous]

1. I'm waiting for "Hank" to come out and say . . .

"Well, that didn't quite work out the way I thought it would. I need another $750 billion." Watch out, though; if he prefaces his remarks with "My Lord, I have a cunning plan" again, we probably shouldn't pay him any heed.

[whistle]

2. No real bailout money has been thrown at the market yet as far as I know

....it's all been talk by Paulson and BushCo and you know hat Wall Street says: "Money talks, bullshit walks".

[mrcheerful]

3. Excuse me but just because republicons said something doesn't mean they follow

through on what they say. The only things republicons refuse to throw money at, hell they even barrow money to throw, is social issues. But if it is a problem for their true base, the credit card has no limits on them throwing money at the problem. Kind of like the story I heard last night about contractors in Iraq having sand shipped into Iraq, wtf? Tax payers dollars at work.

[tjwash]

4. What a bunch of fucking cons.

It's like taking your car to a crooked mechanic...this parts bad, that'll be 250 dollars. Oops, now this parts bad...that'll be another 400. Wow who'd a thought you had THIS wrong too...that'll be 700 more.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. If you spend $1m/day beginning the day Jesus was born...

“If you spent $1 million per day from the day Jesus was born until Christmas 2008, you would have spent $733 billion”. In other words, you could have spent a million a day for 12.000 years, and still not get to the amount spent in the past 5 days.

From the Automatic Earth, the best blog around on the topic

The other problem is that the administration handed them the money and the very next day, Paulson observed that he can't tell the banks what to do with it. He hopes that they'll lend it out but they have made clear that they have no intention of doing so. They are in hunker-down hoard mode. The money helps their bank stave off collapse a little bit longer.

Did anyone notice that the cost of the hotly contested US rescue bail-out just tripled? "In addition to the capital infusions, which will be made this week, the government said it would temporarily guarantee $1.5 trillion in new senior debt issued by banks, as well as insure $500 billion in deposits in noninterest-bearing accounts .. All told, the potential cost to the government of the latest bailout package comes to $2.25 trillion"

There are no limits anymore to the spending of your money, and don't you forget it. There are a lot of stories today about how Paulson and Bernanke forced the first $250 billion in bail-outs on the banks, and about how Paulson cannot force those same banks to use the funds to increase lending.

I think by now it should be obvious that Paulson never meant to increase lending. After all, who’s left to lend it to? The entire US population is overstretched, overdrawn and underwater, and that while home prices are falling like bricks, retail spending plunges, and unemployment rises. Why would any bank want to lend out money to these people, and why would they want to borrow even more? That game is long over.