For every short seller there's a long buyer. Please don't say you believe the paper thin Strawman that the Politicians set up just so they could call him Bogey and ban him?
This has nothing to do with any self interest. I've bought my farm remember and I'm out of the SM now short or long. I'm with the
200 US economists who signed this letter to Congress this week about the bailout:
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:
As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.
Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT)
Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Adler Michael (Columbia University)
+198 others
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.c...ge_protest.htm
Depositers are easily protected many times over for a fraction of the $700billion starter price of the bailout.
There is only one solution to the debt bubble of unseen and unimaginable size and that is a major recession. That's the bottom line. Anything anyone tries in government to avoid that just makes it worse.
We didn't need 4 new business/first only airlines serving the North Atlantic or Hong Kong routes and a mild recession corrected that misallocation of capital. We don't need over 50 European short haul low cost airlines and a deeper recession will correct that. We don't need over a dozen long haul full service national airlines in the EU and, once again, the only fix is a full blown recession. You can't regulate a solution. You can't campaign a solution or wish one into existence.
The Free Market can sort it all out in short order IF its left to work. The $700B Bailout is an interference in the Free Market and its works and as such I oppose it on both practical and ideological grounds.
The quicker the bust the shorter the recession the sooner the recovery the better for Wannabes.
Ultimately.
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