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Yeti there is no need to manage the dept.Just take the money and run.

EDM is right! Let the Market prevail and to the victor goes the spoils!!! A lot of AIG folks made 100's of millions ..... We have to bail them out ..... but who cares. How about those poor investment bankers at Lehman Bro's. ........ I hope they can make their millions in bonuses last a few years. Let's deregulate EVERYTHING ..... Who cares that your 401K is now worth about 50% of what it was ...... You took the risk and the market took your retirement. I guess you'll have to live on beans ..... and whatever you can shoot.

Al

DAVE W.
This thread is getting "way" off the purpose of this forum.
Mike B.

I'm done

You think maybe Dick and Craig who sell 50% cut barrel Sterlingworths for $3000.00 might actually work for Lehman Bros., and are attempting to create a bubble in used gun prices that will inevitably burst? The only answer is for the Gov't to regulate gun prices. OK, we're back on topic. Everyone can breath easy.

Bill: When the EU (minus GB) switched to the Euro about a decade ago, I was in the French islands spending 7.2 francs that I bought for $1.00 USD. The franc converted to Euros at 6.55; the first Euros I bought cost about $.90...and the price escalated over the past years to over $1.50, and now, given the economic discombobulations in Europe and America, the exchange rate is trending lower, seemingly in our favor, or maybe not.

A weak dollar ($1.50 to the Euro) means Americans are employed making products that are bought by EU persons who consider what we make and sell a good buy. The weak dollar means increased exports and a favorable balance of payments; in other words, a surplus of foreign money being earned by American businesses, which translates to expanded plant facilities and increased employment. As the US dollar strengthens our exports will decline, fewer workers in export-oriented industries will earn overtime, and some will become unemployed. So from the standpoint of American industry and American jobs, a weak dollar is a good thing.

Yet there are people, Bill for example, who equate a falling Euro and rising US dollar with selfish greed and unconscionable profits. But whose? Maybe Bill's! You only benefit from a stronger US dollar if you are chaffing at the bit to send your share overseas. For the American worker and American investor, a strong dollar is a bad thing in so far as production decreases and jobs are lost.

Every American has a vested interest in the continued prosperity of his or her employer on many levels; first from pay check to pay check; second, in the expectancy of continued job security; and thirdly, in the need to invest in one's retirement.

The post-WWII boom era is over. It used to be that American industry grew predictably by leaps and bounds while Europe and the rest of the world were emerging from war devastation or agrarian feudalism. The world was our customer because no one else was making anything. But this began to change in the 1960s, and was certified in 1971, when the USA could no longer dictate the price of gold at $35 per ounce. Once gold began to float and foreign currencies sought their own level, America became just another cog in the wheel of the world economy (the dreaded "D" word: globalization). But to the extent that our economy was less controlled than most others, we were more free to innovate and cope with the changes endemic to time marching on. But this is changing...

When I see a poster on a Forum that revolves around a preference for something as luxurious and non-essential as fine old double guns, carping about the "American way promoting greed" and getting his licks in about dreaded lawyers and characterizing a well thought analysis as a "rant"...well, people, it's all over.

Methinks that Bill wouldn't know a Euro if it bit him. And his fixation on a 60% decline in the price of lead: Is he heavily invested in commodities? As to a "rant," it seems to me that preemptively attacking "profits" and "greed" on a double gun Forum is somewhat like the psycho-ink-blot-test, where the patient is shown a nebulous blot of ink and then tells the doctor what ails him. But for most thinking people, without an axe to grind, an ink blot is simply a blot of ink.

For a few disturbed persons the ink blot brings out all their hidden terrors, like fear of profits, and the belief that everyone but themselves being greedy. But isn't buying a foreign gun priced in Euros a certain type of greed. And what kind of dirty profits does Bill have to spend in Europe, when a Remington 870 costs $209.00 at his local big box sporting goods store. Buy American, or buy wherever, and if it costs too much, don't buy.

In the final analysis, the rise and fall of the Euro versus the USD has nothing to do with greed or profits, but is a simply balancing of the books. The Euro has nothing to do with guns made and sold in the USA. If the Bills of this world crave a foreign made gun, originating from a Euro-dollar country, the exchange rate is not going to affect the gun in the country where made (say, Italy).

An Italian $1,000-Euro-gun will still cost $1,000 Euros in Italy, no matter up-and-downs in the exchange rate. So where's the gouge? Bill can still go to Italy and buy his $1,000 Euro gun for $1,000 Euros. It may cost him more US dollars at the current exchange rate to purchase $1,000 Euros to pay for his $1,000 Euro gun. But where's the gouge? Perhaps in Bill's mind. And in the minds of all the wrong-thinking sympaticos and fellow travelers who subscribe to the notion that profits are bad. Check your IRAs and HR-10s. The bad old profits from years of greedy investing are gone. The bubble has popped. Happy now? Or was it just the other guy's profits you were attacking? EDM

Al: I said that Bill's rant about undefined "greed" and "profits" was pure BS. I said nothing about deregulating "everything." Fact is, I'd like to see some regulating of the kind that protected my generation from the credit card predators and usurious interest rates.

While I don't often read or agree with the New York Times and only read someone else's copy when on the East Coast, while at the Vintage Cup I saw on the front page something I agree with wholeheartedly: "If Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were so much in the national interest that they had to be nationalized; why weren't they regulated?" I thought they were! I used to audit banks. We reviewed loan portfolios on a statistical basis, investigated a sample in detail, drove by properties, sent confirmation letters to borrowers...what the hell happened!

When I was a 29-year-old CPA, moonlighting my way trough a Top Ten law school in the tax department of a Big 8 accounting firm, making a good manager-level wage, and going out of town on audits, weeks at a time during the summer, I could not get a credit card because I was a "student." That's how tough it was in 1970. Now my Labrador Retriever can get plastic.

I just got my Visa bill with an $885 balance, and was encouraged to pay the minimum $25 (which would include $21.04 at 8.9% APR interest if I didn't pay currently). Thus I would liquidate all of $3.92 of the $885.00 balance. And should I be a day late, then they slap on a $29.00 penalty for not paying $3.92 of principal for one day. And if I was someone strung out on the easy credit and couldn't just pay off the balance...gotcha!

But how's this for regulation: I went to my bank in the town of 550 where I have banked exclusively for 36 years, to get cash for my RV trip to Alaska this summer. I thought $4,00 would be about right to get started, because I don't like to use plastic unless it's necessary. The teller who has known me forever says, "Sorry Ed, but I need to see your driver's license to copy." She explained apologetically that all cash transactions over $3,000 are reported to Homeland Security. It seems that the regulators put the onus on financial institutions to report all "suspicious" transactions. The banks, fearful of "profiling" Arabs, and getting sued under conflicting laws or regulations or judicial decisions, simply agreed among themselves that $3,000 and up was suspicious. This is what I mean by over regulation. Can you imagine how many $3,000 cash transactions there are every day?

But getting back to plastic, Congress did the dog and pony show with credit card honchos a few years ago: Capital One, MBNA, et al said that if they were tamed down (regulated) then they couldn't advance so much ready cash to unworthy borrowers. Whoa! The whole pattern of federal and state regulation had been to lean on lenders to make bad loans since 1975. Remember "red lining"? How about "profiling"? Banks were damned if they did, and damned if they didn't. Making marginal loans got bankers brownie points with the likes of BHO, who sued Citi Bank for withholding credit from unworthy borrowers.

The whole thrust of regulation the past third of a century has been to expand credit...damn the consequences, full speed ahead! This federal policy finally revealed itself for what it was(and is) when the private-lender spigot ran dry and the feds had to dish out $600 to all the people who were tapped out on plastic. A bankrupt government paying a dividend; was it really any worse that the bankrupt AIG honchos went to a spa?

When I bought my first house at age 31, a two family for $26,500, I paid $6,500 down and the mortgage interest was capped by law at 8% (I think I paid 7%). The usury rate was 8% for personal signature loans, and auto loans were regulated severely. People paid off new cars over 3 years, and maybe 2 years, which was the used car pay out. Interest was deductible, so everyone cared about the rate. When you filled in your tax return the interest paid came back to haunt.

Turn on your boob tube tonight and see the terms now: "No money down! $5,000 cash back! Zero percent interest for five years. No payments till 2009!" No wonder the car market is oversold; no wonder that Chrysler, GMC, and Ford are essentially bankrupt; They sold all the 2008 models to people who wanted but didn't need a new car way back in 2004 or 2005. Now no one can afford a new car because they are still being gouged on the last one. Here's how it works:

EDM went in to buy a new riding lawn mower in April priced at $3,500. The dealer wrote it up and said that I didn't have to pay anything till October. I said I wanted to pay cash and be done with it and asked about the cash price. The dealer said the cash price in April was the same as if I paid it off in October, and explained that they lay off all their paper, no recourse, on a finance company that plays the odds: The odds were that by October 99% of the lawn mower buyers would opt to an installment payment plan at a high rate of interest, and interest would be computed back to starting in April. This is a scam, but the American mode of acquisition has become so dependent on time pay that it is considered essential to continued prosperity. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are credit junkies and will mainline "Buy Now, Pay Later" whenever it is an option.

In summary, way back when this 67 year old retiree was young and vulnerable and could have been tempted into a life of debt servitude at high rates of interest and with penalties heaped on, I and my generation were protected from self-destructive tendencies by meaningful regulations such as usury laws and stingy lenders who dolled out prudent loans consistent with a hefty down payment.

Then two things happened: Social engineering and regulating to force lenders into advancing credit where a prudent person would fear to tread, and the allowing of branch banking, whereby one bank could buy up others and get so big that loans became a financial transaction on the holding company level, local loan officers were marginalized, and lines of accountability got blurred; Fill in the form and pass it along; make no value judgments; rely on third parties for a bundle of meaningless paperwork, run up the closing costs, and when the file is 1/2-inch thick, make the loan. Brain-in-gear is not part of the deal, because the loan documents get put in a box, and when the box weighs 25 pounds it gets sold to Fannie Mae, where they never look inside. Yikes!

ED:
I'm confused. Can you point me toward the legislation that forces banks to make sub prime loans ........ "Then two things happened: Social engineering and regulating to force lenders into advancing credit where a prudent person would fear to tread," .... and is it Social Engineering" that invented the "insured credit swap" or the idea that turned crappy loans into bonds with a AAA rating? I don't recall any of those ideas in LBJ's Great Society. ....... and I'm a great fan of LBJ even though he almost got me killed in '65 and '66.

AL

Just a few comments here and I guess I'll get on with my life.

My "rant" was a well thought analysis of how profits what grease the skids of our economy; without being better off in the evening, there's no incentive to go to work in the morning. So I guess we agree that profits are good, or at least that's what you said: "...nothing wrong with profitibality...healthy and necessary driver of an economy."

So why are you so hostile and contentious?

As to showing you an auto executive who is barely making it so you can call him a liar, who mentioned lying auto executives but you? What's the point of being an auto executive if it leads to barely making it? Lying auto executives on a shotgun BBS, really GregSY: This red herring stinks.

But let me clue you in on auto executives, even though I don't know any, but I listen to the news and read newspapers. The Janesville WI GMC plant about 25 miles NE of me is going to close in December, and the Belivdere IL Chrysler plant about 40 miles SE is a 50/50 bet on closure if GMC and Chrysler merge. For sure those soon to be unemployed Janesville people, autoworkers and executive level, are going to be telling their tales of woe at the unemployment office, and it won't be lying.

You have a knack for not saying what you mean and not meaning what you say. Of course you want to take this personal. Otherwise why would you inject something about a "27 year old retired lawyer screwing somebody somewhere." FYI GregSY, not everybody is created equal, as evidenced by your postings on this board, which, as you say, "speak volumes."

Actually, to get the story straight, once and for all (I hope), I decided to move on from law in fall of 1980 when I bought a 43 foot ketch for $100,000; Wife Nancy (then 34) and I (40) and two kids (15 & 7) sailed that boat from Chicago to Europe and the Caribbean in 3 years, selling it in MD in spring 1984, for $135,000. I had added $8,000 of equipment, so my gain was $27,000. We spent about $14,000 per year, all inclusive, for 3 years or $42,000 total, less the gain on the boat, and our 3-year adventure to Europe and beyond cost a net $15,000 or $5,000 per year, or about $420 per month. The rich get richer if you consider living on $420 per month "rich." And for someone who has not practiced law for going on 28 years, I am amused by your fixation...did a lawyer abuse you as a child?

For my part, I never once worried about lying auto executives, greedy profit-mongers, or "condoning behavior that brings on economic woes." I did worry about wind shifts, building seas, getting a good sextant position, and bringing my family to port safely. In other words, living life on $420 per month. What were you doing in 1982? Grousing about that which you still don't understand? I would think so, because you are really good at it.

You are "confused": I guess we agree on something. But, No. I'm not going to bring you up to speed on something that can be Googled. The acronym for the law starts with "C" and it is well-known in the context of the pre-existing prudent-lender procedure of not lending in bad neighborhoods--Google "red lining."

Banks were under the gun of the regulators and trial attorneys to extend credit where they would otherwise not lend money. BHO was part of a lawsuit that resulted in with a settlement by, as I recall, Citi Bank. If you are genuinely interested it's easy to find.

I personally am astounded by what has transpired in the credit markets since I checked out on April 30, 1981 and went sailing. I audited banks as a CPA, and represented the mortgage division of a syndicate of banks as an attorney. None of this sub-prime stuff was even thought of back then. My only banking experience since then is at my local state bank, population 550, where they make loans in the old fashioned way. They do package loans, as is common, and lay them off at Fannie Mae, so they can keep making loans, but regular banks are not at the root of the sub-prime melt down. The "banks" you hear about are "investment banks," not local banks where you walk in and sit with a VP to ask for a loan.

There is a good blurb on the Yahoo home page quoting Greenspan on this very topic. He was amazed at what slipped in the crack during his watch. What I am waiting for are the indictments, starting with the home buyer who inflated his or her or their income, and it's no defense to say that some shylock mortgage broker said it was OK. A person I knew in the late 1970s went to the federal pen for misstating financial statements to secure federally insured farm loans. And if mortgage brokers were part of the perjury, there is conspiracy, and if mortgage packaging investment bankers failed to preform due diligence, then off with their heads, and so forth, right to the top.

Part of the problem is the "pile on" agenda of the drive by media. The sky is falling based on manufactured negative reporting. Witness the couple os poster people for everyone's worst nightmare: Their story as constructed by the New York Times follows:

Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum are pictured long faced in front of their California dream home. They say that they paid $225,000 in 2001 and added $75,000 "improvements" with a second mortgage in 2004. Now their best offer will leave only $220,000 to pay down the $300,000 they still owe. Whoa! They paid nothing down, added a 40-foot ham radio tower and swimming pool, and after 7 years have reduced zero principal. Reading the lying news story closer we find that the $220,000 is mortgage pay down, not the offer, which would include 7% brokerage fees, closing costs, lawyer and title fees, and buyer concessions to settle contingencies (like remove the damn eyesore tower).

Actually the true story is that these people bought a house they couldn't afford with no money down (no equity), have lived there for 7 years, and they splurged on a 40-foot tower that the neighbors hate, and the buyer, odds on, has no use for. It is a fact of life that adding a swimming pool adds zero value. Add sales-associated costs to the $220,000 they say is left over for the bank and the buyer's offer is somewhere between $240,000 and $250,000. The problem here is stupid people, doing stupid things with other people's money. The parting shot of the NYT article was Mrs. Twiddle Dee's lament that "I think the bank bears responsibility."

Well, it remains to be seen if anyone is held to task, or whether our next president simply declares this whole thing to be nationalized guilt, like nationalizing the financial sector, send out another economic stimulus check, and we'll let the government fix things. After all, only the government can print $700,000,000 of crisp new money to spread around. No wonder people are buying expensive shotguns. EDM