Can we attach there future wages and compensation so that they have to pay back the damages that they have caused?

The inflation calculator says:

What cost $200,000 in 1987
would cost $360,532.62 in 2007.

Also, if you were to buy exactly
the same products in 2007 and 1987,

they would cost you $200,000 and $110,090.23 respectively.

Do you want to do another calculation?

We cannot expect these people to act in the public interest. They must go so that the administration can hire people who will clear the toxic management of all these institutions.

Look by taking a step back. This entire “fire sale” is orchestrated, has been and will not change. It is set on a charted course. Yes there are uncertainties for the inside players just like in a poker game but it is important to remember this is an insiders game and they all know where the extra cards are when needed. Everyone asks for answers to the how’s, whys and the like.

1) Immediately step in to secure the “Real” economy which is labor and industry. the real producers of real assets in a viable economy and conscientious society. Do this by Stopping the foreclosure bleeding by 1-year mortgage foreclosure reprieves and reestablish based on existing market current values with realistic terms or repayment.

2) Take immediate actions to set controls for the return of TARP funds already given away through a direct combination of repays from liquidations and reevaluations.

3) Break these “Click” (To Big To Fail) bank groups up! Dissolve the deficiencies by discounting their holdings based on “real” street values via determinations after taking overall inventory and categorizing of holdings as regards to good or trash. Good repays treasury.

4) Take these and whatever decent measures are necessary to derail any attempts to make greater the accumulations and centralizing of the concentrated funneling of our basal economies into the palmy hands of a class which would make renters out of all of us and our children to come.

antares
too small to succeed?

As Corey points out, this is a very complex problem. On the one hand it is maddening that assets are valued so low. In some cases you have packages of mortgages that are 2 or 3% in default, but are being valued at 30 or 40 cents on the dollar. I am no accountant, but it does seem to me that there are possible accounting solutions.

But at the end of the day, I am with Simon. Break up the big banks, let the weak ones fail, and let the FDIC pick up the pieces. It will cost trillions. But it seems that we just spent $380 billion to no effect and we are about to spend another $1.1 trillion (the rest of the TARP and the new $800 billion stimulus) and we have no idea if it will work. Re-formulating the banking industry will work because the money will go into cleaning up the industry and thereby restoring industry wide confidence, which will, in turn, re-start lending, which, in turn, will re-start the economy. I believe Simon when he says that doing it the way they (Bernanke and Paulson) have been doing it so far will prolong the problem for a decade or more.

People keep telling me this is different than Japan, but I am not so sure. Didn’t they have massive bad loans on the books of the banks, and the banks stop lending, as real estate drastically devalued? And they kept the banks going even though they were not lending, and hence the term “zombi banks”? There are differences, but they seem rather small to me.

I thought Sheila Bear should have been Treasury Secretary. As it is, I say, let her do her job and clean up the banks.

I think we should stress test them as hard and mercilessly as we can. No more Mr. Nice Guy as we citizens are ready to rise up in revolt to their selfish me-ism demands.