Comments on: Here’s an Idea . . .

By: Wow, that 2blog folder is full. | J's blog

Wow, that 2blog folder is full. | J's blog — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:59:10 +0000

[...] Here’s an Idea . . . « The Baseline Scenario [...]

By: Triona Carey

Triona Carey — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:47:19 +0000

you (and others) inspired me to blog about the new ideas we should turn to instead of propping up bad business and putting up with more of the same. It’s at http://short.ie/rulabula – interested in your thoughts on it

By: Curtis

Curtis — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:40:04 +0000

In the sixties, I remember someone suggesting that you could show your displeasure with a corporation by mailing their Postage Guaranteed envelope to a cinder block and posting it. Never tried it but my mail deliverer thought it would work. Maybe a credit card soliciation envelope full of blank pages would serve to show your dissatisfaction with there bank.

Ingite your rage, use you consumer voice, move your cash deposits.

By: wagelaborer

wagelaborer — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:25:57 +0000

Further. All lobbyist bribes to politicians should be paid in toxic assets.

And let them give “$100 million” CDOs at a time. It’s not like it’s real money, anyway. At least, not until Congress tried to make it into real money. Let them take it as bribes, instead.

By: Triona Carey

Triona Carey — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:02:20 +0000

excellent idea and most comments agree except for the one rude person that says “These assets are probably CDOs with a minimal value of $100 million. You can’t break them up into $10,000 pieces. I love how this crisis had suddenly made every jackass a financial expert with “the solution”.” I note that this comment is anonymous – who’s the jackass?

By: salesanalyst

salesanalyst — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:13:25 +0000

This idea has got to be made viral. Get it out to everywhere on the web, and force those in “power” to adjust to what the people want to do with those assets. After all, we in effect already own a large chunk of the banks already.

By: DoItInvest - investing blog, investment tools, financial analysis, portfolio management » Blog Archive » What To Do with the Toxic Bank Assets - Give Them for Free to Citizens

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:50:18 +0000

[...] bankrupt or be offered for free to willing persons. What should the U.S. government do? Some other blogs said that they should be given to the bank executives, instead of their salaries. Nice try. But [...]

By: James Kwak

James Kwak — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:09:14 +0000

Actually, it’s pretty simple. The bank creates a fund and puts the assets in the fund. Employees get shares in the fund, just like any other mutual fund. If they want to redeem their shares, they put in a redemption request, and the fund sells enough assets to pay out the redemptions. There are lots of other problems with this idea, but that isn’t one of them.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:46:33 +0000

These assets are probably CDOs with a minimal value of $100 million. You can’t break them up into $10,000 pieces. I love how this crisis had suddenly made every jackass a financial expert with “the solution”.

By: February 11, 2009 « Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

February 11, 2009 « Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:49:55 +0000

[...] Kwak writes: Why not say that all bank compensation above a baseline amount – say, $150,000 in annual salary – [...]

By: starfish

starfish — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:46:16 +0000

Brilliant. I haven’t fully thought this through, it occurred to me that that would leave the high flyers with a paper, that they will want to be able to spend, somehow … either by exchanging for dollars in an open market (including the remaining inventories) … thus establishing actual present market value, or by simply trading assets with other people who have what they want, e.g. barter. “I’ll trade you 4 GM’s for your junk mortages.”

Everyone knows barter is awkward and impractical for an economy of this size … but what would be feasible would be for the toxic assets to be issued in paper form, and in small denominations. A similar situation existed before the Fed with individual banks issuing notes that served as money. These guys love to securitize everything, any, so why not force them to bundle the heaps of paper in a manageable number … (six?) … the relative value of which could be sorted out on the Forex of a similar new market.

bankers who overvalued in the extreme would be punished the most, and those who were above board would receive compensation closet the purchasing power they would otherwise have had if they had been paid directly in dollars.

The baseline suggestion seems to clean up the immediate mess … and could lead to a situation where is simply put of business, because, while the value of the toxic assets is not known at this time, they do represents assets like land, homes, businesses.

I thought there might be a path to asset-based money without returning to a gold standard, a path to ending the Fed’s fiat money system, and a more sound and less suspect economy on which to build on, on our way out this mess.

Does this extension of the Baseline idea have any merrit?

By: Rick Cain

Rick Cain — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:35:27 +0000

Another name for Regulation is “Laws”. So when somebody says they support deregulation of Wall Street, they actually want to make Wall Street a lawless domain where everything is legal, nothing is unethical and only fools have morals.

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:32:12 +0000

The biggest flaw of the bailout is conceptual. They are holding assets that have little value..or less than what the banks would like to sell them at.

It doesn’t matter if you solve this problem…that is the problem with dicking around trying to solve it. The core problem is that there are not enough places to park investment. 1 sentence.

We can talk about the bad assets and the mistrust all we want…but this is how a bust looks, fear to lend existed countless times before. It looks about the same each time, only with new wrinkles. Securitization isn’t the problem, too much wealth at the top is the core problem..only solving that will end the depression.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:57:16 +0000

How about letting these companies fail?
The $500K cap is way too high, I live & work in Midtown NYC. $200K is more than enough.

By: arpie

arpie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:09:09 +0000

Excellent!

Re-posted at http://metasurfing.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-solve-toxic-asset-problem-give.html and facebook, let’s spread the word!