700 billion bailout?!?!?!

[strigori]

And by not going with the bailout, the stock market lost what amounts to $1.1 Trillion. The no voters clearly dont understand what the issues are. Unless the credit system gets a fix asap, the whole economy could implode.

 

Good, I still beleive this country would come out of a bad recession in much better shape then we will with this stupid plan.

 

I agree with NewEarth, The rich keep getting richer, The poor keep getting freebe's and us middle income, stress'n to support a family keep getting screwed.

 

By all means let's give a bunch of CEO's that pay themselves 1.5 million a year an easy way out.

You clearly do not understand what is at stake here. I would stake out all the CEOs for the F'in crows. But that isnt the point. Without some form of bail out, credit stops. Period. The entire US economy is based on credit. Without credit, no one can buy houses or cars. Companies cant buy inventory, cant make payrolls. Companies that rely on the housing industry go under. Auto manufacturers go under. A great deal of retailers go under, unemployment spikes to levels not seen since the '30s. We arnt looking at a recession, we are looking at something to rival the great depression. And with the interlocked global economies, it also will trigger a world-wide recession. The Asian markets already took a dive in response to ours.

[T_O_Bull]

Well the House has voted it down and the stock market fell 778 points. I wonder how much this has cost all those citizens out there who have money in 401-K's. Retirement keeps looking further and further away.

T_O_B

[DJR313]

Well the House has voted it down and the stock market fell 778 points. I wonder how much this has cost all those citizens out there who have money in 401-K's. Retirement keeps looking further and further away.

T_O_B

 

Market is partially rebounding today, but look for a further drop when the SEC lifts the 10 day short selling block on the financial stocks. That could be an ugly day. The markets are so volatile and skittish right now that it will not take much more for a complete collapse.

[DaveH]

And by not going with the bailout, the stock market lost what amounts to $1.1 Trillion. The no voters clearly dont understand what the issues are. Unless the credit system gets a fix asap, the whole economy could implode.

 

Good, I still beleive this country would come out of a bad recession in much better shape then we will with this stupid plan.

 

I agree with NewEarth, The rich keep getting richer, The poor keep getting freebe's and us middle income, stress'n to support a family keep getting screwed.

 

By all means let's give a bunch of CEO's that pay themselves 1.5 million a year an easy way out.

Yea. I really think you need to read about what's actually going on..

[DJR313]

And by not going with the bailout, the stock market lost what amounts to $1.1 Trillion. The no voters clearly dont understand what the issues are. Unless the credit system gets a fix asap, the whole economy could implode.

 

Good, I still beleive this country would come out of a bad recession in much better shape then we will with this stupid plan.

 

I agree with NewEarth, The rich keep getting richer, The poor keep getting freebe's and us middle income, stress'n to support a family keep getting screwed.

 

By all means let's give a bunch of CEO's that pay themselves 1.5 million a year an easy way out.

Yea. I really think you need to read about what's actually going on..

 

Read this, it explains how this plan is going to attempt to curb that. Courtesy of yahoo finance.

 

New York - Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of Goldman Sachs, made $73.7 million last year. James "Jamie" Dimon, chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase, had to make do with $57.2 million, reported Forbes magazine.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

 

But if either company takes part in the federal government's $700 billion rescue plan for financial firms, Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Diamon may have to be content with $500,000 a year, or their company will have to pay higher taxes.

 

While it's not likely this will cause either man to skimp on meals, the proposed mandate shows the depth of animosity toward highly paid executives on Wall Street. Some compensation consultants wonder, in fact, if the clampdown may be the leading edge of a shift away from the enormous pay packages of the past decade.

 

"Executive pay rates and Wall Street in particular have reached extraordinary heights," says John Challenger of Challenger Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based executive outplacement firm. "We may be at the point where the pendulum is beginning to shift."

 

No doubt about it, financial executives have made a bundle – sometimes pocketing multimillion-dollar packages while their companies were taking losses that had been run up on their watch. Among them: Charles Prince, former head of Citigroup, ended up with "accumulated benefits" of $29 million; Stanley O'Neal, who ran Merrill Lynch & Co., got $161 million in accumulated benefits, and Martin Sullivan of AIG received a severance package of $47 million.

 

These packages have irked many in Congress. "We want to make sure that executives aren't given 'golden parachutes,' aren't given extraordinarily high salaries from the federal government stepping in," said Rep. Chris Shays ® of Connecticut on "NBC Nightly News" on Sept. 22.

 

The bailout legislation racing through Congress this week aims to limit some of these practices, at least as far they concern CEOs and chief financial officers. Under the proposed new rules, when the Treasury buys more than $300 million in troubled assets, the selling institution must limit payments made if an executive leaves for a reason other than retirement (sometimes called golden parachutes) and must hold executive compensation to no more than $500,000 per year. Otherwise, the company will face additional corporate taxes, including a 20 percent excise tax on any golden parachutes.

 

Some critics say the effort is too weak.

 

"Congress missed a golden opportunity to use the leverage of the bailout to put tough controls on an out-of-control executive pay system," said Sarah Anderson, project director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank in Washington. "Without clear limits on pay, the public is being asked to put their trust in Secretary [of the Treasury Henry] Paulson, a man who made hundreds of millions of dollars as a Wall Street CEO, to decide what's 'excessive,' " she said in a statement Monday.

 

IPS favors a lid on CEO pay set at 25 times the pay of a bailed-out company's lowest-paid worker. The current top federal paycheck – the president's $400,000 annual compensation – represents about 25 times the pay of the US government's lowest-paid employee.

 

Financial executives, for their part, say most of their compensation is at risk because it is tied to the firm's performance in the stock market. In testimony this May before a congressional committee, Merrill Lynch's Mr. O'Neal defended his payout. "When the business does well, all shareholders do well. But if the business does not do well, the value of the compensation can plummet."

 

Indeed, O'Neal's net worth in Merrill Lynch stock has plunged from $127.7 million in January 2007 to $40.2 million, according to a Sept. 21 New York Times report.

 

Are financial executives being singled out for pay limits because of the strong anti-Wall Street sentiment on Main Street? Some suggest that bias plays a role.

 

"If we put caps on compensation to anyone benefiting from government subsidies or funds, that could affect almost anyone in the private sector," says James Barth, a senior finance fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif.

 

Compensation watcher Graef Crystal wonders where the government draws the line. "Everyone is on the dole," he says. "Take the solar industry, for example. The whole industry is subsidized."

 

The same is true for farmers, aerospace companies, and, soon perhaps, the automobile industry, which is looking for $25 billion in government funding, Mr. Crystal says. "It's hard to see any industry that has not been affected" by reason of receiving government help.

 

Yes, Wall Street is among the highest-paid industries – whether those companies have had good years or bad ones, says Crystal. He recounts a conversation he had back in the 1990s with John Gutfreund, who at the time was CEO of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank that has since been absorbed into Citigroup. "We are having a profit problem," Crystal remembers Mr. Gutfreund telling him. "We need to put together a $100 million [compensation] fund so our good people don't defect to other firms."

 

"Gutfreund told me, 'In good times we pay high. In bad times we switch and say we have to keep our good people.' "

 

And when does pay drop on Wall Street? asked Crystal. "He answered, 'We never pay low, and we get a severance package if we really screw up.' "

 

Gutfreund, through a spokesman, said Monday that such a conversation never happened.

 

Doubts abound as to whether any pay curb will be effective, because executives are likely to find a way around it.

 

"These are the most clever people when it comes to writing financial contracts," says Doug Elmendorf, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "They will hire people to figure out how to get around it."

 

Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, who runs training sessions on complex financial products on Wall Street, says a lot of anger can be found inside Wall Street firms themselves. "There are a lot of people who work for these firms who don't even make $50,000 or $60,000 a year, and they are angry, too," says Ms. Valladares, a principal in MRV Associates.

 

Some executives who don't want to take pay cuts may opt to go to private equity firms or hedge funds that are not involved in the rescue plan.

 

"The most knowledgeable executives will go to where the best jobs are. They might not go to these troubled companies anyway," says Mr. Challenger.

 

If the CEOs at troubled banks have a choice of participating in the government's plan or watching their company go out of business, he says, the decision is easy. "You save the company and all the people," he says.

[BigRedfxtoy]

They say we can't afford not to bail them out, I dont quite understand completely but at least they are planning on cracking down on these overpaid CEOs that rake in the cash. I read an article today that the Merryl Lynch or WM guy left last year with like 46 mil as he escaped the fire, unbelievable. I just hope they get the market straight so property values stop decreasing(while taxes still go up ).

 

 

A couple of this CEO's have been fined millions. Then again no where near what they made from this though.

[huskerswrkhavoc]

I've heard it from my dad a million times and I'll say it here. Without the middle class this country would be screwed!

 

and why would you say that?

 

 

You do realize that the top 20% of all income in the united states pays 50% of all taxes in this country?

[BIGREDIOWAN]

I've heard it from my dad a million times and I'll say it here. Without the middle class this country would be screwed!

 

and why would you say that?

 

 

You do realize that the top 20% of all income in the united states pays 50% of all taxes in this country?

Have you listened to any of the experts or any of the presidential debates over the past year or so? The middle class is the most taxed out of anyone in the nation. If we are doing poorly than the rest of the country is doing poorly. We buy the most homes, products, etc. and when we can't do that the countries economy starts to spiral downwards. I will not feel sorry for someone who makes over $250,000 a year and wants to complain about taxes because I don't think they truly know what it means to spend 40 years of your life working to barely afford anything. Maybe they worked hard to get where they are at, but I've watched middle class americans like my father work his a$$ off for his entire life and he barely scrapes by. Whether your numbers are correct or not, which I believe they are not. If you look at the amount of money those people make, compared to the amount of taxes they pay, I bet it's a fairly shocking percentage that goes out to taxes compared to the percentage of taxes that middle class americans pay out of their income. I will never support an argument that says rich people are taxed more and support this country. I don't mean to come across as a jerk, but your comment struck me the wrong way so don't take offense to my comment.

[huskerswrkhavoc]

I've heard it from my dad a million times and I'll say it here. Without the middle class this country would be screwed!

 

and why would you say that?

 

 

You do realize that the top 20% of all income in the united states pays 50% of all taxes in this country?

Have you listened to any of the experts or any of the presidential debates over the past year or so? The middle class is the most taxed out of anyone in the nation. If we are doing poorly than the rest of the country is doing poorly. We buy the most homes, products, etc. and when we can't do that the countries economy starts to spiral downwards. I will not feel sorry for someone who makes over $250,000 a year and wants to complain about taxes because I don't think they truly know what it means to spend 40 years of your life working to barely afford anything. Maybe they worked hard to get where they are at, but I've watched middle class americans like my father work his a$$ off for his entire life and he barely scrapes by. Whether your numbers are correct or not, which I believe they are not. If you look at the amount of money those people make, compared to the amount of taxes they pay, I bet it's a fairly shocking percentage that goes out to taxes compared to the percentage of taxes that middle class americans pay out of their income. I will never support an argument that says rich people are taxed more and support this country. I don't mean to come across as a jerk, but your comment struck me the wrong way so don't take offense to my comment.

 

 

i'm a student. i make roughly 12 grand a year. paying for my own schooling, what not. My parents are in that said middle class, and i'm not anyway defending the upper class.. but it IS A FACT that 50% of all tax money comes from the top 20% of income. Look it up. If you won't or don't want to, i'll try to find it in my econ notes and upload that....i will absolutely guarantee that. You can believe it if you want, don't if you don't want to, but i guarantee that is the truth. Fact.

[huskerswrkhavoc]

here is a link showing that you're assumption about percentages are completely wrong.

 

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2007/09/26/...e-tax-brackets/

[BIGREDIOWAN]

I've heard it from my dad a million times and I'll say it here. Without the middle class this country would be screwed!

 

and why would you say that?

 

 

You do realize that the top 20% of all income in the united states pays 50% of all taxes in this country?

Have you listened to any of the experts or any of the presidential debates over the past year or so? The middle class is the most taxed out of anyone in the nation. If we are doing poorly than the rest of the country is doing poorly. We buy the most homes, products, etc. and when we can't do that the countries economy starts to spiral downwards. I will not feel sorry for someone who makes over $250,000 a year and wants to complain about taxes because I don't think they truly know what it means to spend 40 years of your life working to barely afford anything. Maybe they worked hard to get where they are at, but I've watched middle class americans like my father work his a$$ off for his entire life and he barely scrapes by. Whether your numbers are correct or not, which I believe they are not. If you look at the amount of money those people make, compared to the amount of taxes they pay, I bet it's a fairly shocking percentage that goes out to taxes compared to the percentage of taxes that middle class americans pay out of their income. I will never support an argument that says rich people are taxed more and support this country. I don't mean to come across as a jerk, but your comment struck me the wrong way so don't take offense to my comment.

 

 

i'm a student. i make roughly 12 grand a year. paying for my own schooling, what not. My parents are in that said middle class, and i'm not anyway defending the upper class.. but it IS A FACT that 50% of all tax money comes from the top 20% of income. Look it up. If you won't or don't want to, i'll try to find it in my econ notes and upload that....i will absolutely guarantee that. You can believe it if you want, don't if you don't want to, but i guarantee that is the truth. Fact.

 

I was a student as well until May and have to start paying my student loans back this month so I know what your going through. None of my econ professors ever mentioned anything to that effect as far as those numbers go. If that's true they should be paying more like 80% of the taxes.

[walksalone]

Another kudos for the Bush administration!

 

Heck this money could have been used to wage war on another country. Iraq : $600 billion to date link

 

I'm not an apologist, but this falls more on Clinton's head than anybody because about some dozen odd years ago, he wanted everyone to own a home, no matter what the cost might be.

[huskerswrkhavoc]

I've heard it from my dad a million times and I'll say it here. Without the middle class this country would be screwed!

 

and why would you say that?

 

 

You do realize that the top 20% of all income in the united states pays 50% of all taxes in this country?

Have you listened to any of the experts or any of the presidential debates over the past year or so? The middle class is the most taxed out of anyone in the nation. If we are doing poorly than the rest of the country is doing poorly. We buy the most homes, products, etc. and when we can't do that the countries economy starts to spiral downwards. I will not feel sorry for someone who makes over $250,000 a year and wants to complain about taxes because I don't think they truly know what it means to spend 40 years of your life working to barely afford anything. Maybe they worked hard to get where they are at, but I've watched middle class americans like my father work his a$$ off for his entire life and he barely scrapes by. Whether your numbers are correct or not, which I believe they are not. If you look at the amount of money those people make, compared to the amount of taxes they pay, I bet it's a fairly shocking percentage that goes out to taxes compared to the percentage of taxes that middle class americans pay out of their income. I will never support an argument that says rich people are taxed more and support this country. I don't mean to come across as a jerk, but your comment struck me the wrong way so don't take offense to my comment.

 

 

i'm a student. i make roughly 12 grand a year. paying for my own schooling, what not. My parents are in that said middle class, and i'm not anyway defending the upper class.. but it IS A FACT that 50% of all tax money comes from the top 20% of income. Look it up. If you won't or don't want to, i'll try to find it in my econ notes and upload that....i will absolutely guarantee that. You can believe it if you want, don't if you don't want to, but i guarantee that is the truth. Fact.

 

I was a student as well until May and have to start paying my student loans back this month so I know what your going through. None of my econ professors ever mentioned anything to that effect as far as those numbers go. If that's true they should be paying more like 80% of the taxes.

 

 

funny, because my econ teacher made a pretty big deal about it when we went through it... possibly because of the current state of the economy, and when we were breaking down the two candidates plans for what they want to do with the taxes.... and obama basically adds a huge amount for that class that is already at the top, a little for the one below them, and then cuts for the rest, while mccain cuts across the board....

[AR Husker Fan]

Another kudos for the Bush administration!

 

Heck this money could have been used to wage war on another country. Iraq : $600 billion to date link

I'm not an apologist, but this falls more on Clinton's head than anybody because about some dozen odd years ago, he wanted everyone to own a home, no matter what the cost might be.

Actually, no. See HERE.

[walksalone]

Another kudos for the Bush administration!

 

Heck this money could have been used to wage war on another country. Iraq : $600 billion to date link

I'm not an apologist, but this falls more on Clinton's head than anybody because about some dozen odd years ago, he wanted everyone to own a home, no matter what the cost might be.

Actually, no. See HERE.

 

That's nice, but the majority of the houses that are being foreclosed on were purchased during the Idiot from Arkansas's administration...