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Nickelless
Administrator
USA
5580 Posts |
 Posted - 11/24/2008 : 11:23:50
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Just saw this on Yahoo...
By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON – President Bush argued Monday that the government's dramatic rescue of Citigroup was necessary to "safeguard the financial system" and help the economy recover, and he said there could be more such moves if other institutions need help.
Bush said he approved the action, recommended by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, while flying back to Washington on Sunday evening from meetings in Peru with Pacific Rim leaders. He said he also spoke with President-elect Barack Obama on Monday morning, part of what he has promised will be "close cooperation" between his administration and the Obama camp until the transfer of power on Jan. 20.
Referring to the Citigroup rescue, Bush said: "We have made these kind of decisions in the past. We made one last night. And if need be we will make these kind of decisions to safeguard our financial system in the future."
Briefing reporters later, White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto would not identify any other firms or institutions that the government could help next. "We would never foreshadow any specific actions involving private firms, but I think it's safe to say ... that we take threats to our financial system seriously and we stand ready to take any steps necessary to prevent systemic events in our economy," Fratto said.
Bush, who spoke after meeting with Paulson and other Cabinet members at the Treasury Department, said they all realize that Americans are concerned for their jobs and savings.
"We will safeguard the financial system as the first step necessary for economic recovery," the president said. "This is a tough situation. But we will recover from it."
Also while at Treasury, just across a sidewalk from the White House, Bush joined a meeting of top administration officials who are working on greater economic cooperation with China. Bush met on Friday in Peru with Chinese President Hu Jintao for talks focused in part on the global economic turmoil.
The flurry of activity by Bush, which had not been announced in advance, came the morning after the government's agreement to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in possible losses at Citigroup and to plow a fresh $20 billion into the troubled company.
The president has repeatedly sought to defend his administration's unprecedented intervention in the financial markets in recent months, arguing against criticism from some fiscal conservatives by saying that the moves go against his free-market instincts but are necessary because of the dire times. He also has said that he was warned that the economy could fall into a slowdown worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s if the government did not act.
Analysts said a Citigroup failure would have seized up still-fragile lending markets and caused untold losses among institutions holding debt and financial products backed by the company.
The bold move regarding Citigroup is the latest in a string of high-profile government bailout efforts. The Fed in March provided financial backing to JPMorgan Chase's buyout of ailing Bear Stearns. Six months later, the government was forced to take over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and throw a financial lifeline, which was recently expanded, to insurer American International Group.
At the meetings in Lima, Peru, over the weekend, Bush succeeded in getting the nations there to endorse the action plan drafted a week earlier at an international summit Bush hosted in Washington.
That means that both the so-called Group of 20 nations and the Pacific Rim countries are now on record behind overhauling financial regulation and avoiding the temptation to erect new trade barriers during the current downturn.
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Cody8404
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
602 Posts |
Posted - 11/24/2008 : 16:49:06
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I see Uncle Sam doing all they can to bury us deeper in debt. They are willing to bail out those who deal in debt, but not those who build and produce jobs, like GM.
Granted we need a cleansing, but to keep those who are trying to make slaves of us will just make it worse. |
Awake, O kings of the earth! Come ye, O, come ye, with your gold and your silver, to the help of my people, to the house of the daughters of Zion, to the help of the people of the God of this Land even Jesus Christ. |
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swusc
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
553 Posts |
Posted - 11/24/2008 : 22:35:22
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The auto industry is broken and a bailout isn't going to fix their problems.
The banking system is (for good or bad) a public need. If the local power company was going under, then you can bet money the government wouldn't let the power go out. They might not save the shareholders, but they would keep the service going.
Without a banking system, then the whole system is gone. Just think about it. Credit supports everything. A house couldn't sell for a fraction of today's prices without credit. Cars would be a tough sell as well. The price of everything is supported by lending and credit. Without that lending, then production would be way down.
Is the system crap? Maybe. Is it fair to all? Not even close. Is everyone better off because of it? Yep even though the gain isn't equal to all.
The banks have a special standing. They are needed because they control the economy due to their lending power.
You can't let huge banks fail without removing that power first. FYI, the treasury got ripped off in their deal with Citigroup. The taxpayers should be outraged at what just happened. We might have to save the entity, but saving the stockholders is crap.
-SWUSC |
`Everybody is ignorant. Only on different subjects.' Will Rogers
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Alan Greenspan, 1966. |
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Bush says Citigroup deal needed to protect system
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