Wonkette
- GO GET YOUR MONEY PEOPLE: Collapsing investment banks are yesterday’s news, trendsetters! Now we can turn our attention to the biggest possible commercial banks failing miserably, like, say, Washington Mutual. And when that collapses on Sunday, probably, it will likely drain up what’s left of the FDIC’s insurance fund. The FDIC can always get more money from the Treasury, or we can just have a BANK RUN!!! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BANK!!! PANIC! CHAOS FIRE OBAMA BURN!! [AP]
Screw you all. I have my apple and pencil selling plus pimping spot picked out.
Hey, if the bank I pay my mortgage, auto loan, and/or credit cards to fails, can I stop making the payments???
I heard Jim Cramer on Morning Joe say that we are almost out of this bad time because, and this is my favorite part, there is not much left that can fail.
Does this mean Barry’s going to almost kill himself until Russert shows him how much better the world is with him? And then he reaches into his pocket for Chris Matthews’ petals? Is it Christmas already???
I know it’s an important and perhaps even winning issue, but all this talk of banking, mortgages, interest rates and bailouts is boring.
Did Ralph go to the zoo and fuck a panda? A real journalist would be on that shit.
Connect the dots everyone. Sell everything and buy gold n’ guns.
azw88: That would be AWESOME.
Where are the pictures of men and women making out in front of AIG HQ? All I keep seeing are angry Taiwanese trying to figure out what happened to their life insurance policies.
azw88: My understanding, based on what I’ve been able to glean from the Road Warrior movies is that we are all to enter a giant inverted colander, two at a time, and bash one another while Tina Turner laughs at us in a funky accent.
Come to think of it, it doesn’t sound like much of an economic plan, but I’m sure it’s better than whatever McCain has been able to come up with.
StripesAndPlaids:
Jim tells me that Bear Stearns is still a great buy.
Asswipe hasn’t figured out that the amount of “bad” mortgage securities is a little over a TRILLION and the banks have only eaten about a 1/3 of the way thru this shit sandwich.
azw88: no, you only get debts forgiven and a bailout if you are a huge, greedy, rapacious institutional donor to Republicans.
McCranky says the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Why would he lie? I think you should trust him…you know, if you just don’t want to think about it very much.
Whatever!
Stephen Colbert’s Financial Advisor, Gorlock, said to “buy” WaMu on last night’s show.
Good thing I just shined up my lootin’ shoes.
I have all my money in gold and Ron Paul blimps, so I’m gonna be living it up while you bitchez are shining my shoes.
No more bail outs. Let them all fail. Spend my goddamn tax money on me. I want healthcare. I want safe neighborhoods. I want good schools.
azw88: Ha ha ha….
StripesAndPlaids: Well, shit. When Jim Cramer says a thing, the opposite thing always happens.
We are fucked.
phew, thank god I went with Chase.
Doglessliberal: SIGN ME UP!!!!
I just need to gather up, oh say a few hundred million… I can beg for the $$ on the internets…. people just love to give money to such things!
I am not super hip on this “financial” stuff, but if the taxpayers bail out WaMu and I’m an account holder there, does that mean I’m technically lending money to myself?
NoWireHangers:
Could you get me a TV? One of those flat ones? I want to watch the rEVOLution in Hi-Def!
rambone: I approve this message
so if i take my credit cards to the bank now….theyll give me more money?…
NoWireHangers: You greedy, whining bastard!! Don’t you know it is the rich, greedy capitalists that need our symapthy and tax $$.
You peons, well just a bunch of whining bastards only thinking of themselves, what about the executives, their failing companies no longer have the $$ to give them the multi-million dollar golden parachutes that they deserve!
Suddenly those cardboard boxes in the copier room are looking like…alternative housing. MINE! Nobody gets my precioussssss.
Do credit unions fail aka should I start preparing to loot my college campus soon?
And the DOW is, predictably, down almost 300 points… I need to get me an old-timey truck, strap all of my stuff on it, and start driving across the dustbowl out to Calla-forney.
azw88: New Campaign Slogan:
Republicans: because rich people need welfare too.
masterdebater: I’m pretty sure by “the fundamentals of the economy” McCain is talking about the Dozers from Fraggle Rock.
But seriously folks, wouldn’t it be funny if the market did completely crash and McCain still got elected? HA! We wouldn’t even notice Roe v Wade getting overturned because we wouldn’t even have the money to pay for an abortion! Hoard your coathangers people!!! You too can be a vigilante abortionist in the post-apocalyptic free market dead zone!!!
I better brush up on my 3-Card Monty.
tunamelt: Depends on whether or not you are at a state school or an Ivy League. Do be careful on campus of land grant institutions: most of them are strapped.
grendel: NO! OKIES KEEP OUT OF MY STATE!!
On a positive note, if I keep putting on weight some day I too may become “too big to be allowed to fail.”
George Bailey: [yelling at Uncle Billy] Where’s that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where’s that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That’s what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it’s not gonna be me.
ainm cleite: McCain is old man Potter.
tunamelt: You weren’t alive in the ’80’s, were you?
StripesAndPlaids: My monies are all at the Univ of Southern California credit union—a private university but by no means an Ivy.
4tehlulz: I was four in the eighties.
azw88: Along those lines, is Sallie Mae set for failure any time soon? Cuz I got some student loans that ain’t gettin’ paid any time soon…
I’ve got my bindle stick all shined up and ready to go. Ah, the carefree life of the hobo.
I’m going to stuff my mattress with my bank run money. Then loot a brand new memory foam mattress. Then burn that mattress in protest.
I’m afraid we’re not going to get to the massive inflation stage of this crisis soon enough. I want to be taking wheelbarrows full of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread. Frankly, I could use the exercise.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
tunamelt: Oh. Well I’d start looting now then.
Is it wrong that while the financial world is ending and it’s going to suck for everyone, I feel a little triumphant that all these people who went into ‘marketable’ majors in college, are getting fucked too?
Not that I was ever bitter about it or anything.
Don’t blink and run to the bank. But before that, watch Jon Stewart last Monday, explaining the blinking issue.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184481&title=sarah-palin-wont-blink
Cicada: Bindle is such a great word. Can I still use it when my bindle is made out of the Prada bag I maxed out my credit card for?
NoWireHangers: No, you burn the mattress with the cash, as the memory foam mattress will be worth more.
Viva la Cynthia: Ditto. That’s what I’m holding out for…for the bastards enforcing the repayment of my student loans to crash and BUUUURRRRN.
NoWireHangers: Where do you think you are? Canada?
I feel a run on Ramen noodles and Mac & Cheese…
Haha, banks! That’s what you get for your wimpy $29 overdraft fees. If only they had gone with an even $30, that would have been another $5 billion just from me and my loser friends!
NoWireHangers: Expand your asset portfolio by hitting the liquor stores first. Since when has Mad Dog 20/20 or Bahama Mama ever depreciated in value? Wild Turkey: the new gold.
tunamelt: that’s my question too! Do credit unions fail? Specifically, Navy FEderal Credit Unions? That would REAALY suck on so many levels!
magic titty: God, I wish. All they have to worry about up there is an occasional bus beheading.
Viva la Cynthia: I’m anticipating a “hobo chic” moment.
*adds “The Postman” to Netflix queue.*
*cries*
…first of all Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should have NEVER been privatized in the first place. It was only spun off as a way to hide/pay for the Vietnam war. Secondly Republicans make me sick. They espouse all this free market bullshit and libertarianism when they don’t want to feed poor kids in the inner city or help grandma pay for heating oil in the winter, but when Wall St. says jump they jump and then ask how high! When a Republican says deregulation it is a code word for: We are going to let companies get so big that they can rip you off and you have no one else to turn to because they are the only ones that provide that service/product. And then when the shit hits the fan and they are on the brink of going belly up, we will bail them out because they are “Too Big to Fail”. Ignoring the fact they are the ones that let them get that big in the first place. At this point I’m glad we are bailing these companies out; because it makes it easier to break them up when President Obama takes office in January!!!!
Special Agent Jack Mehoff: That movie (that made me lose all respect for Tom Petty) came on TBS last night at 1ish. Foreshadowing, perhaps?
Mmm pork n beans cooked in the can and a mug-o-gin, the life of Riley. it’ll be fun, we can all learn to talk like hobos with their double secret jazz age lingo and stuff.
http://www.hobonickels.org/terms.htm
can someone make us a fancy hobo name generator? pleezzz.
azw88: Nope. The only thing that will change is that you’ll be making payments in the blackmarket value of your neighbor’s heirlooms or in yuan.
“They [Fed] pretended they were drawing a line in the sand with Lehman Brothers but now two days later they’re doing another bailout,” said Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“We’re essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and…losses socialized,” Roubini said, adding that auto makers, airlines and other struggling businesses would no doubt be asking for government help too.
…but if any common person asked for a little assistance (not a bailout), it’s “FUCK YOU! You’re on your own, peasant!”
If any of you are in my neck of the woods, please stop by and sample my exquisite Seagull Casserole.
McMansions for sale or rent
Rooms to let…fifty grand.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain’t got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of anal boom boom
Gets an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means
Way of the road.
Palin has announced her plan to aid the FDIC. From now on the FDIC will cover only deposits made in moose pelts.
Viva la Cynthia: Dear God I hope there’s still time, to get it sent to me.
no one’s jumping out of windows yet but with the change in construction over the past 80 years you can’t open a window.
Take that all you rich old fucks! Go fresh college graduates FTW!
lilblackcorvette: keep the port holes closed and stay away from large cruise liners taking on water.
you’ll have to bail on your own. keep pails handy.
On the bright side, if you don’t have any money (like me), there is nothing to lose and everything to gain!
lilblackcorvette: ps: don’t worry. i’ve got a few bucks there. what me worry?
facehead: We wouldn’t even notice Roe v Wade getting overturned because we wouldn’t even have the money to pay for an abortion! Hoard your coathangers people!!! You too can be a vigilante abortionist in the post-apocalyptic free market dead zone!!!
Naw, we’re going to need all those fresh young newborns for a Swiftian modest proposal to keep meat on the table. Waste not, want not.
NoWireHangers: Very true. But with this Anton Chigurgh-style cattle gun, which I use to track down my lost savings, I’ll be a threat to any approaching beheaders.
It seems like before you can ever make a “too big to fail” argument you should submit to an anti-trust inspection at least 2 years ahead of time.
My new hobo-name is “Rambo the Skateboard Pimp.” I picked it up from the awesome unstoppable new blockbuster Righteous Kill.
On finance related news, what does a person deserve who invests in a bank whose motto is a Homer Simpson “woo hoo!”
LittlePhatGuise: Might want to hold off for a couple of hours. WaMu gets cheaper with every tick of the clock.
donner_froh: how many share bits can i getz with 5 inches of string and a nice 16 ounce soup pot already loaded with cream-o-tuna, all you need is a can opener and a spoon. oh and like ten ol timey dollar bills for kindling to start the fire.
steenky.slobberdrunk@underthemailcar.com
lilblackcorvette: It is just about impossible for a credit union to fail since they are old, stogy, unhip, conservative financial institutions that accept deposits from members and then loan that money to other members at a higher interest rate than they pay for the deposits.
In other words like banks used to be.
Since they can’t get into credit default swaps, hedge fund financing or other financial WMDs the only failure risk are the usual ones olf fashioned ones–fraud, embezzlement, etc. So while a badly managed CU can tank the whole industry won’t.
But if the rest of the finacial world collapses…
I keep seeing Bush reacting to all of this carnage with: “Hey, look! I can cause economic catastrophe!”
The Financial Banks, with no collateral left to borrow for their daily cash flow, are now allowed to tear down the firewall and raid their savings and loan branch accounts, i.e. your savings and checking accounts. So before you take too much schadenfreude in Washington Mutual, you better decide that you really do prefer the smell of unwashed hobo sex and tarred railroad ties. It’s all you are going to get from here on out.
OH NO! Are my deposits insured up to $26.50?!?! I need to eat dinner!
I was seriously going to buy an ounce of gold yesterday, but forgot to and now the price is well over $800. :/
huertanix: The price of gold has ranged wildly from over 1000 to 500 in the past 4 years. It held at 900 for quite a while, most of the year, but has fallen recently to the 700 range-because banks are selling their holdings in the gold sector and flooding the market.
The fact that gold is going up under these conditions is a really bad sign.
lilblackcorvette: To you and Tunamelt - No they are insured by an institution that isn’t the FDIC. I don’t remember the initials but it is separate, but still insured. Credit Unions also have more regulations on them and haven’t gone quite as stupid as the banks so you are probably quite safe.
sati demise: Eh, you can count on gold to go up anytime there’s “blood in the street” securities-wise. That time is now… as it was in the dot com meltdown… as it was in the big dump “Black Monday” of 1987, etc.