Bush convenes Plunge Protection Team

[SlowDownFast]

Bush convenes Plunge Protection Team
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Last Updated: 1:20pm GMT 07/01/2008

Bears beware. The New Deal of 2008 is in the works. The US Treasury is about to shower households with rebate cheques to head off a full-blown slump, and save the Bush presidency. On Friday, Mr Bush convened the so-called Plunge Protection Team for its first known meeting in the Oval Office. The black arts unit - officially the President's Working Group on Financial Markets - was created after the 1987 crash.

It appears to have powers to support the markets in a crisis with a host of instruments, mostly by through buying futures contracts on the stock indexes (DOW, S&P 500, NASDAQ and Russell) and key credit levers. And it has the means to fry "short" traders in the hottest of oils.

The team is led by Treasury chief Hank Paulson, ex-Goldman Sachs, a man with a nose for market psychology, and includes Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and the key exchange regulators.

Judging by a well-briefed report in the Washington Post, a mood of deep alarm has taken hold in the upper echelons of the administration. "What everyone's looking at is what is the fastest way to get money out there," said a Bush aide.

Emergency measures are now clearly on the agenda, apparently consisting of a mix of tax cuts for businesses and bungs for consumers. Fiscal action all too appropriate, regrettably.

more:
http://tinyurl.com/yswmtj
(telegraph.co.uk link)

[fascisthunter]

1. Bush Begging: "Please Don't Let the Economy Crash While I'm...

in office."

[Warpy]

3. It's not going to work

because those checks will be parsimonious enough that they'll go to pay bills that are in arrears instead of contributing to a cash spree at the local shopping mall.

It doesn't much matter what he does. His basic philosophy, that basic ideology of his party, is fatally flawed. The collapse has started, and nothing he or his party does can forestall it.

When all wealth is concentrated among the few and the many are left to assume debt, the economy becomes unstable and cannot survive. Welcome to reality, Stupid.

[SlowDownFast]

4. .

'Nuff said.

[fascisthunter]

5. It's Not Like He Didn't Know What He Was Doing

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist


http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=9326

It's just gonna happen sooner than later. The man is a sick bastard, stupid is too generous.

[AnneD]

8. I have said it before....

but I really enjoy reading your posts, Warpy. You are accurate in your assessments and succinct in your comments. Once again I find myself on the amen pew, nodding in agreement.

[Warpy]

9. Why, thank you!

It's nice to get a few strokes after I've been blasted as a dimwit in other forums, sometimes deservedly.

I approach economics as an historian. I've read the texts and found them lacking. History is the better teacher of what these clowns have been up to and what effect it's going to have on the country in the near future.

[ORDagnabbit]

2. inflation inflation inflation!!!!

[CGowen]

6. Now the time has come for Bernanke to live up to his nickname n/t

[Captain Angry]

7. Bribery

There is nothing that can be done to fix the underlying problems in the economy.

When banks won't lend to each other, when pension funds are unsure of where to place their investments for the long haul, and when SAVINGS accounts could actually contract thanks to poor investments made by the bank, no easy fix can exist.

I see any attempt to paint this as possible as a way to hide the attempted bribery of the voters.