If You Liked The Lehman Bankruptcy You'll Love This...

Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias are talking up an admirably creative idea to create turn a weakly-capitalized bank into a good bank and a bad bank without the requirement of any new money.  The gist - transfer bad assets and non-deposit liabilities to a non-operating entity (I would suggest a transfer to the holding company level.)  Leave the deposits and the good assets in the bank.  The holding company has the equity in the bank, so the numbers still add up.  However, the bank is well-capitalized and deposits are safe.

My objections:

1.  I dispute the premise that protecting deposits is the only important goal - when Lehman failed, it had no deposits (not being a bank), yet the result was chaos.  From the authors:

Note that in this re-arrangement, the debt claims, including the short-term commercial paper, are direct liabilities of the bad bank.  If the bad bank cannot re-fund its commercial paper one morning, the bad bank must be re-organized.  Some of its claims must be turned into equity.  This is the standard sort of Chapter 11 re-organization.

Thus, what this re-organization of the ownership claims does is show how easy and orderly a garden-variety Chapter 11 reorganization of a large bank could be, and how unnecessary it is to throw additional public money into insolvent institutions.

2.  I question the accounting.  The authors have surely lost track of the preferred stock held by the government (that does not impair their analysis but it does impair my confidence.)  What worries me is the treatment of repo agreements and other secured loans.

A repo agreement includes transactions in which a bank (Citigroup is the example here) has as an asset a government security which is financed by a secured loan from another primary dealer.  That is reported as both an asset and a liability on Citigroup's balance sheet.

If (I say *IF*) the authors are proposing to transfer only the short term liability to the bad bank but not the secured asset, well - the disruption to the government securities market would be enormous (and it won't be allowed.)  I see in their example that $118 billion of non-deposit liabilities remain with the good bank so maybe this is not a problem [ I also see that as of Sept 30 2008 Citigroup had $117.536 billion in "Accounts Payable"; that rounds to $118 billion and may not be a coincidence].  Eventually I may have time to delve into Citi's numbers - here is their Sept 30 2008 financial info.

To be continued...

[END OF THREAD]

Comments

[kim]

Hot news, they found the Higgs-Boson in one of the CDS computer models.
============================

[BumperStickerist]

Hmmmm Tom is in potential disagreement with Brad DeLong *AND* Harvard-educated wunderkindblogschriftsteller Matthew Yglesias

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...

Sounds like a an episode of RAW gone horribly, horribly wrong.

[kim]

Carbon credits are worth only a quarter of what they were worth last summer. Julian Glover, at the UK Guardian, found through icecap.us, explains how the low price is encouraging fossil fuel use.

And Obama wants this jiggerery-poo market for us, too.
============================

[narciso]

How does one keep the bad assets from corrupting the good; which was the whole point of this blasted exercise in the first place. Who will lend this money tosecuritize
this debt. The whole thing surprisingly makes no sense.

[steve sturm]

1- were it so easy to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' assets.
2- why would creditors give up their existing claim to ALL of the bank's assets in favor of a claim on 'bad' assets?
3- since the end result is close to the same, why not just skip this and just convert holders of 'bad' debt (however that is defined) into equity?

[DebinNC]

If the absurdity of today's "fiscal responsibility" summit coming on the heels of the gargantuan stimulus-bailouts (with promises of more to come) doesn't wake the nation's editorial cartoonists from their Obama induced coma, nothing will. Seriously, if Obama isn't widely lampooned for this, I'll be very afraid about what that presages.

[fdcol63]

The word "nationalize" used to scare most Americans ... now we just shrug.

Is this what Ayn Rand meant?

[bad]

The letter to President Obama came from a woman in Arizona whose husband lost his job. He was able to find work, but the new gig came with one-third the pay; the family is struggling to make their mortgage payments.

The letter from the Arizona woman illustrated a policy conundrum, recalled senior adviser David Axelrod. President Obama read it, and absorbed the lesson.

"She said they had made all their mortgage payments, but were running out of money," Axelrod said. "And they were told they could not renegotiate unless they were delinquent in their payments."

Before President Obama's housing speech last week, he'd made copies of his letter and "sent it to his financial team and said, 'This is the kind of person our housing plan should help," Axelrod recalled.

That one third of the old income part of the story means this family is unlikely to qualify under the president's plan.

How clever of Jake Tapper to tell the story.

LUN

[Pagar]

For those who believe that mortgages are meaningless if the holder has no claim to the secured asset and for those who believe Breaking and entering is still a crime as is criminal trespass:

RBO reports the official Obama volunteer web site is calling for people to join with ACORN in their efforts to incite civil disobedience.

Barackistan’s USA Service - Renew America Together supports ACORN’s Home Defenders and encourages civil disobedience

In particular, could somebody please explain why this “brand new national service initiative from the administration of newly elected President Barack Obama” is promoting civil disobedience — supporting ACORN in its efforts to do so — and encouraging Barackistanis to violate the law? As stated on the USA Service - Renew America Together website:

We are inviting you to become Home Defenders. As a Home Defender, you will be called to action when someone’s home is threatened. When a homeowner faces eviction as a result of foreclosure, we will send our Home Defenders an alert, so you can come to the homeowner’s aid and stand by them as they refuse to leave when the Sheriff comes to lock them out.

[Mel]

Hard to apply mark-to-market accounting to assets that have no bid/ask market to them. The hedge fund loans are going to be problematic at best.

Put 'em in receivership and be done with it. Nationalizing them just puts everything on the taxpayer, even more than they already are. And we all know how good the gov't is at running a business.

[kim]

bad, at nine; further proof that Obama lives in Never-Never Land.
==============================

[Ann]

Pagar,

Have you seen this: HOUSING IS A RIGHT

It is Stuart Varney of FOX Business interviewing Bertha Lewis, Executive Director of the New York branch of ACORN, about the recent invasion of private property by the criminal enterprise.

Also, I heard Harry Reid tell Tom Brokaw this morning that we are NOT Nationalizing Banks.
All is well! I feel so much better.

[DebinNC]

"Monday through Friday the head of White House Correspondence delivers ten letters to be read by the President..."

That's someone whose background I'd like to know more about.

[fdcol63]

" ... That's someone whose background I'd like to know more about ... "

And whether or not the letter writers are taking their daily antipsychotic medications.

[narciso]

This kind of hands on involvement got us the Iran Contra Affair in foreign policy, I don't see the result will be better in domestic affairs

[kim]

I love it, governance by anecdote. What a clown show.
====================================

[kim]

This business of civil disobedience is insidious. It is being officially encouraged on the climate front and the housing front. Kristallnacht next.
===============================================

[bad]

Kim, it is even more of a clown show that the anecdote doesn't match the governance.

[kim]

I have this picture of Obama reading his ten letters, and coming upon the one from the people who've had their income cut to a third of what it was before. A light bulb flashes over his head, and he sends the letter off for 'something to be done with it'. Then he turns to his Alinsky coloring book, and starts diligently trying to stay within the lines.
===================================

[Pagar]

Ann, thanks for that link. That was a very revealing interview. I like that site, I just don't go there much anymore. Some of the leftist commentators they had just got to the point I could no longer stand to read them, without getting my blood pressure totally off the chart.

[kim]

Next Up: Milk, graham crackers, and a restful nap.
=============================================

[kim]

He revels in Kindergarten,
We wallow in Kinderscheissen.
============================

[Rick Ballard]

Kim,

If someone were living next to an ACORN target house, would running a hose up through an attic vent and turning on the water constitute "counter civil disobedience"? Moving ACORN squatter trash into a house destroys not only the value of the house in question but the value of houses around the soon to be trashed house. Why shouldn't neighbors protect their property by making ACORN "targets" unlivable?

[Extraneus]

I love it, governance by anecdote.

Well, he wouldn't be the first...

President Carter mentioned his daughter during a 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan, when he said he had asked her what the most important issue in that election was and she said, "the control of nuclear arms".

[Jane]

I think the entire country is speechless.

[Danube of Thought]

I love this gem from the Detroit News:

"WASHINGTON -- The vehicles owned by the Obama administration's auto team could reflect one reason why Detroit's Big Three automakers are in trouble: The list includes few new American cars.

"Among the eight members named Friday to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and the 10 senior policy aides who will assist them in their work, two own American models."

I guess that "Buy American" crap really has been shelved.

[DebinNC]

link "On Wednesday, the [visiting student] group started at the White House Visitors’ Center to speak with Obama’s Director of Presidential Personal Correspondence Elizabeth Olson"

Same person? "Elizabeth Olson LA at Obama's Senate office fit a few minutes in to meet with the CODEPINK women"

Olson was Sen. BO's "environmental aide".

[Fresh Air]

If the holding company is still insolvent, what difference does it make if the chartered bank isn't? The bondholders will put the thing in Chapter 11 and the equity holders will be wiped out. Ma and Pa Kettle's savings aren't the problem anyway.

God, these guys are unbelievably stupid. Even for liberals.

[cathyf]

"She said they had made all their mortgage payments, but were running out of money," Axelrod said. "And they were told they could not renegotiate unless they were delinquent in their payments."

Well, duh, even I know what to do. Put up a "for sale" sign and aggressively market the house. When an offer comes in, you call the bank and say, "Ok, here it is -- you can take this as payment in full for the short sale, or you can foreclose. You are not going to be able to get any more than this after you foreclose, so we suggest you take our offer and save all of the expenses of foreclosing and selling the house yourselves."

And then you move out into a rental that you can afford on the new income.

[Rick Ballard]

Back to the current post - Who would want to own a "bad" bank holding company and who would be willing to take any of its paper? The "bad" bank holding company would have a senior claim on the "good" bank assets - why would anyone take even "good" bank paper with a dying albatross fluttering above it?

[DebinNC]

DoT's link The country is implacably careening toward a precipice, but this is funny.

[Danube of Thought]

Rasmussen's Obama approval rating now at 58%; GW Bush's was 62% in late February of his first term.

Rasmussen investor confidence and consumer confidence now at all-time lows.

[Pofarmer]

Oh, now, c'mon Cathyf, I mean, really, isn't living within your means a bit harsh?

[RichatUF]

narciso-

I don't see the result will be better in domestic affairs...

Teapot Dome from history and Fannie and Freddie for today.

And re the letters:

Dear Obama Claus-

I have been a community organizer this year and a very good voter. I have forged 20 voter registration cards and voted twice for you the last holiday season. I wanted to ask you for gas in my gas tank. When you come to spread some of the wealth around I have a dime bag for you and a bowl of unicorn chow for your unicorns. I ♥ you.

etc &r

[Pofarmer]

Back to the current post - Who would want to own a "bad" bank holding company and who would be willing to take any of its paper? The "bad" bank holding company would have a senior claim on the "good" bank assets - why would anyone take even "good" bank paper with a dying albatross fluttering above it?

That's my question? Who would want to own the thing, and what's the point?

[DebinNC]

"Don't buy stuff you can't afford." Wanna bet millions who watched this didn't get the joke or wouldn't recognize the obvious wisdom of cathyf's advice?

[Captain Hate]

Ann, thanks for that link. That was a very revealing interview.

Yes, but even though she got thoroughly pwn3d in that interview, the Acorn bitch still achieved a victory of sorts by taking too much time with her redirection of questions (like answering "Do people not making mortgage payments have a 'right' to the house" with "Well we don't think that banks have a right to a bailout") so that the Constitutional expert didn't have a chance to appear and rebut her delusional claims. Difficult interviewees should be proactively dealt with by having them in a different room with a camera and mike and knowing that at any avoidance of answering the questions, they'll receive a single warning about it and then subsequently cut off. That harridan would've been given her sole warning on the mention of the bank and then cut off on whatever following flight of non-sequitors she engaged in. Then the constitutional expert could've been brought in and explained what rights people not paying their mortgages really have.

[Fresh Air]

Rick B & Pofarmer--

Exactly my point. You can't magically make the company better by shifting the liabilities around. Yes, you can re-jigger the bank holding company's capital levels by downstreaming or upstreaming cash. But these things are always capitalized at the holding-company level, to prevent just this sort of shenanigans. The bondholders wouldn't stand for it, the equity holders would be wiped out, and the other banks and securities firms would pull their commercial paper and working capital lines. The gangrenous arm would spread to the rest of the body.

A better idea, which these idiots evidently never thought of, would be to just sell off the bank and liquidate the assets in Chapter 7. Ooops! That's what they're trying to avoid? Oh, okay. Then get Zero to suspend mark-to-market and do all the other things Steve Forbes suggested. Until then, get used to eating the words "too big to fail."

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

Put 'em in receivership and be done with it.

Precisely. Indymac, although admittedly much smaller, is already through receivership and back in business.

Put up a "for sale" sign and aggressively market the house. When an offer comes in, you call the bank and say, "Ok, here it is -- you can take this as payment in full for the short sale, or you can foreclose.

But a short sale represents the market and price mechanism in operation, which is exactly what these retards are trying to displace.

He was able to find work, but the new gig came with one-third the pay; the family is struggling to make their mortgage payments.

Obama, being, how else can it be put, a moron, takes precisely the wrong lesson from this. The hundreds of millions of workers are in a constant state of flux with losers and winners constantly boiling to the surface.
A guy making 1/3 his former income is almost certainly on the road to bankruptcy or voluntary liquidation prior to it. That is why cramdowns and renegotiated payments do not work. The people in foreclosure, by a huge margin, are not insolvent only because of their mortgage. They have depleted their savings, if they had any, and cannot make any of their debt obligations, of which they usually have many. The market uses foreclosure to take the house from a bad risk and sell it, at its present value, to a good risk. That is how a bottom forms and a market clears. It is also how banks learn not to loan to bad risks and how bad risks learn, if they are educable, to be good ones.
The unnecessary distortion of the market's corrective forces by government always prolongs the agony and often intensifies it. It remains to be seen whether 2008-2019 will replace 1930-1941 as the prime example. The sad thing is most of the Dem leadership would be perfectly happy that it did as long as it increased their political power.

[kim]

Ignatz, they don't mind impoverishing the already poor by raising the cost of energy, either, because it consolidates political power. Regressive? Do we care?
=====================================

[Pagar]

IR, Excellent post.
One suggestion--in the last sentence the word-- Most--should be replaced with the word ALL. IMO!

[Neo]

How about the federal government buys up all the "toxic assets" that are MBS-s and loans them to the GSE's, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to resell.

[matt]

The whole magical debt segregation meme is absolutely mind boggling. Somewhere, someone has to take the hit, and these clowns figure they can just disappear the debt. It was this sort of financial prestidigitation that got us into this mess in the first place.

At the very beginning of this mess, the idea was put forth to buy the toxic debt at a certain discount. At least that was transparent and measurable.Everything since has been obfuscation, it seems.

Markets need transparency and clarity or they will never recover. the politicians are simply trying to cover their asses once again as they lead us down the road to ruin.

We are slouching towards Gomorrah.

[Sue]

Ignatz,

I had a running debate going with a progressive over at Tapper's place. Her and husband, he is a veterinarian she a college grad, used the equity in their home to keep the business going. And can't understand why I am not sympathetic to her plight. Hardhearted conservative, Rush Limbaugh, etc., was thrown at me a lot, to explain how I couldn't want to help her and husband remain in their home. Maybe it's just me, but why on earth should my tax dollars go to keep 2 college educated people in their home? Both are physically able to work, no medical conditions involved. And the home foreclosures are clustered in 5 states.

[cathyf]

I am more and more beginning to think that Dave Ramsey ought to be required listening for Americans. If this lady had called him, she would have gotten advice that was useful. It's not rocket science: sell the house, and be firm-but-polite and get the mortgage holder to take the short sale; sell stuff to raise money; get a second job delivering pizzas or newspapers to raise money; use cash not credit cards -- if you don't have it you can't spend it; make a written budget and stick to it; overall, spend less because you don't earn what you used to.

Or maybe we should require Obama to listen to Dave Ramsay every afternoon. One of the problems with having a president who could always get what he wanted to have by whoring out his political office is that he has no concept whatsoever of how the rest of us make a living and live within our means.

[Danube of Thought]

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Monday that the banking industry is 'very close' to being stabilized and the nation's economy is starting to rebound."

"The Iraq war is lost."
--Harry Reid, April 20, 2007

[Danube of Thought]

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Monday that the banking industry is 'very close' to being stabilized and the nation's economy is starting to rebound."

"The Iraq war is lost."
--Harry Reid, April 20, 2007

[bad]

Did you notice the pictures of Obama in that Tapper story?

He's sitting in the Oval office wearing a sweater.

[RichatUF]

DoT-

It needed to be said twice. Go long ammo, canned food, and gold.

matt-

At the very beginning of this mess, the idea was put forth to buy the toxic debt at a certain discount.

This is the point I don't get re the "toxic assets". The Lehman, WaMu, FNs, and AIG (partial) cds auctions priced all this stuff. The assets aren't "toxic", it's that the banks don't want to sell what the market has priced. Citi knows, based on those auctions, the price of their entire book of business.

[Jim Ryan]

O: I just want to make sure that we're having an honest debate in presenting to the American people a fulsome accounting of what is going on in this program.

Oh, it was fulsome alright.

[Neo]

When Obama was elected, the DOW was 9625.28, when inaugurated it opened at 8279.63 closed at 7949.09.
As I write this it is 7216. So it’s down 2409 since election day, down 1063 since opening Jan 20th, down 733 since closing Jan 20th.

When those next 401(k) account statements go out in April showing the difference of roughly -1500 from a DOW 8772.25 (1-Jan- 2009) on those January statements, the Rick Santelli rant will look mild.

The lead that McCain took from the convention (4-Sept-2008 DOW 11,188) was undermined by TARP, but it was destroyed by the 401(k) statements (DOW 10,850 1-Oct-2008) that showed up in October.

Come April, I expect to see the Obama number go down the toilet.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

The assets aren't "toxic", it's that the banks don't want to sell what the market has priced.

Exactly Rich.
There is always a market. When a person or company's position is bad enough they will sell at whatever price they can get, unless the government intervenes and tries to keep them from getting to that point. The market is trying to clear but Timmy and Barry keep throwing us taxpayers on the tracks as speed bumps in front of the runaway trains of Citi, BofA, etal.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

A couple of points.

(1) the reason (ignoring the DeLong/Yglesias idea, which demonstrates you don't have to know about accounting to get fancy degrees in economics and political science) the reason for a "bad bank" is that it's still likely that a lot of the toxic assets are being undervalued. So you sequester them to get them off the balance sheet of the oeprating banks.

(2) the "toxic assets" are toxic to the over-all balance sheet. Whether the banks take them off the books some other way, or sell them at the depressed prices doesn't matter.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

And can't understand why I am not sympathetic to her plight. Hardhearted conservative, Rush Limbaugh, etc., was thrown at me a lot, to explain how I couldn't want to help her and husband remain in their home.

Sue,

Why are they never sympathetic to the strangers whom they wish to burden, by force of the state, with their misfortune or unwise choices?

A single mom friend of ours and her daughter have been staying with us the last few months while they try to get back on their feet after moving back to CA. That is how sympathy, charity and community are supposed to work, and that is precisley what breaks down when the government illegitmately steps into that place.

[MayBee]

Obama on tv right now:
Obama is going to reinstate pay-as-you-go rule.
If you want to spend, you have to find somewhere else to cut.

He is hilarious!

Also good- agencies are going to save money by not traveling so much. At least he's making this speech from Washington. I wonder if he's paying Eath Wind and Fire or Stevie Wonder this week.

[MayBee]

Sue and Ignatz:

Why are they never sympathetic to the strangers whom they wish to burden, by force of the state, with their misfortune or unwise choices?

On that thread, I wanted to ask if it was ever ok to let a business or person fail.

[Tom Maguire]

If the holding company is still insolvent, what difference does it make if the chartered bank isn't? The bondholders will put the thing in Chapter 11 and the equity holders will be wiped out.

My understanding is bondholders can force the holding company into insolvency, at which point they will be awarded shares in the Good Bank, which can continue to operate.

This amounts to a different way to dress up the likelihood that current unsecured bondholders are going to be converted to equity holders, and good luck to them.

[MayBee]

What happened to Nora O'Donnell?
Her voice is up about 3 octaves, and she's saying "Is anyone a thinker in the Republican party? Where are the thinkers?"

[bad]

Here's the mantra I hear from the left:

Let's ALL share. I'll share the consequences of my bad choices with you and you share the bounty of your good choices with me.

[MayBee]

Now Democrats and Obama seem outraged that some governors don't want to participate in their wonderful stimulus package.
Once again, they are mad at Republicans for doing something they are pretending they are certain will hurt Republicans.

[Danube of Thought]

Not even the Dem consultants I'm seeing on the tube are buying this shinola.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

I know Nouriel Roubini is the current economic guru of choice, but this column is so muddle headed and so factually wrong and canted that I'm afraid it makes everything else he says kind of suspect, even the things I agree with him about. Or maybe especially them. (previously posted in wrong thread)

[Fresh Air]

Tom--

I think the easier way to get bondholders some flesh back is to simply default. The bondholders will file for involuntary Chapter 11 and then it's up to the Bankruptcy Court judge to decide who gets what, not Brad DeLong, Alleged Economist.

[MayBee]

Claire McCaskill believes it right now on MSNBC. Although she slipped just now and mentioned Obama was US Senator.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

What happened to Nora O'Donnell?
Her voice is up about 3 octaves..

I believe it rises and falls in inverse proportion to Barry's approval ratings.

I hope and suspect in a year or two only dogs will be able to hear her.

[Sue]

MayBee and bad,

I try to stay just above snark over there so I don't get banned but the quality of posters is less than desirable. I have a hard time believing some of them are actually real people.

[clarice]

Too bad about Nora. Her husband's a fine chef.

I don't know if I'm sick or just terribly depressed. All I want to do is pull the covers over my head and sleep.

[MayBee]

Ha!

[narciso]

Ignatz, Roubini's pieces, neither in Forbes or previously in his Wall Street Journal interview, make any sense, LUN below, why
giving the Congress this kind of power is like giving a loaded gun to Travis the Chimp

[Neo]

I’ve always favored a Constitutional amendment to allow wage earner to keep a minimum of 50% of what they make.
This means that all governments .. local, county, state, federal and global governments would have to fight over the same 50% (tops). After you pay 50%, you would have a Constitutional Right to keep them to F.. off.

[bad]

I try to stay just above snark over there so I don't get banned but the quality of posters is less than desirable. I have a hard time believing some of them are actually real people.

If that group is representative of those expecting their mortgage to be rescued or their neighbors mortgage to be rescued, there is going to be a lot of disappoinment.

Some think anybody who's fallen on hard times will have everything fixed.

When they aren't the blame will be on "the republicans."

It's a strange lot Tapper attracts.

[Porchlight]

It's a strange lot Tapper attracts.

bad, I don't know if you are alluding to this, but I've always thought Tapper was a big Axelturfer hangout. The snark seems to fall in the same patterns over and over again.

[Danube of Thought]

I have hugely enjoyed taunting the dopes over there under an assumed name. They are easily infuriated when the right buttons are pushed.

[MayBee]

bad, I don't know if you are alluding to this, but I've always thought Tapper was a big Axelturfer hangout. The snark seems to fall in the same patterns over and over again.

Porch- I do know Obama's people monitor Tapper's posts closely. He gets responses directly from them all the time. So I'm sure they have, at least in the past, directed their flash mobs Tapper's way.
But that's one reason I feel compelled to comment there. If Obama's people look at the comments at all, I want them to know what respectful dissent looks like.

[bad]

Porch, if they are Axelturfers then he isn't getting much for his investment. Even the top tier is pathetic.

[fdcol63]

Nora suffers from the delusion that she's an important person whose opinion matters.

[bad]

I agree Maybee. I am ALWAYS respectful and factual at Tapper. And when I quote an Obama position I agree with, like not pursuing the Bush emails, the recent Bagram decision, etc., I don't snark or gloat. I just post the quote and say I support the president in this position.

[kim]

I was having a lot of fun at 'Political Punch' until a series of pointed, mischievous, but clean haiku were deleted a week and a half ago. I distrust such dishonest forums and expect them to be edited to make fools of the right sided point of view.

However, Jake seems to be a new breed of cat. Where else can we have any effect?
======================================

[bad]

Clarice, there are a number of things floating around right now. Strep is hitting a lot of people with bizarre, atypical symptoms.

Sleep if you want to. It may be what your body needs to heal.

But get well soon.

[bgates]

"I have hugely enjoyed taunting the dopes over there under an assumed name."

You haven't been using your birth name, "Danube of Thought"?

[bad]

DoT, that group is child's play for you. I've never seen anyone say "LIE" so much.

[clarice]

Thanks, bad. Nothing hurts. I just can barely stay awake. Maybe it's my cat's bad influence.

[Danube of Thought]

Bad, you're just a much nicer person than I am. Bgates, Danube of Thought is my slave name.

[Pagar]

Michelle Malkin has the latest on:

The truth about ACORN’s foreclosure poster child

Baltimore police have taken fingerprints at the break-in site and the current owner, William Lane, says he will sue ACORN. The home was sold in June 2008 for $192,000. This morning, ACORN official Louis Beverly will face a burglary charge. Look for the Left to turn him into a martyr.

It is not your home, ACORN.

Here is what the MSM won’t be telling you about the so-called “victim” in that case, ACORN worker Donna Hanks — all based on public records and court documents.

According to real property data search information, Hanks bought the two-story home in the summer of 2001 for $87,000. At some point in the next five years, she re-financed the original home loan for $270,000.

She also has a few other heart break stories,
like the "bus driver who can't make the payments on her $800,000 dollar house".

And, of course, the ever popular US president who got a "Discount Home Loan"

Only a few of the many home stories available at her site page now.

[bad]

DoT, it has nothing to do with being nice. I just want my post to be read when I "support" the president's view on something that is different than what he campaigned on.

Especially those areas so dear to a lefty's heart.

[Jane]

What I find consistent at Tapper's and anywhere else that Obama-ites post, is that they never have a reason. It even happens at FWDAJ

"Why do you like Obama?"

I like his stimulus package?

"What do you like about it?"

Silence.

I think it's all about the style and has nothing to do with the policy. If he is that cool he must be right - or something like that.

~~

Clarice I went thru the same thing to the point where I thought I might need medication. I couldn't get myself to stop watching - citing the radio gig as a reason. This is the vigilance 9-11 cemented in me. I was paying attention before, but have a hard time pulling myself away since. I guess it is my own form of PTSS. Now with O in office it feels as important as ever but is probably dumber than ever.

[MayBee]

And when I quote an Obama position I agree with, like not pursuing the Bush emails, the recent Bagram decision, etc., I don't snark or gloat. I just post the quote and say I support the president in this position.

I love it when you do that.

[Sue]

I always attract the "Angies" of the world. Giving me scenarios about doctors and kids and WHAT WOULD YOU DO, ugh! Anyway, I have fun sometimes but lose interest quickly. It doesn't seem fair to be battling with people that in real life can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel.

[bad]

Thanks Maybee.!! But I'm not sure those morons over there get it. The Obama worship is strong.

On the other hand, none of them have high-fived me, either.

[bad]

lol Sue

[clarice]

Dot..About that "slave name"..Honey, remember that little game is a secret between you and me,,:wink:

[bgates]

"my slave name"

I'm going to start calling you "Danube X".

[daddy]

Kim,

A link please to the discovery of that elusive Higgs-Boson particle. I always thought it was the most difficult to find thing in the whole universe, but now that its apparently been been detected that honor should instead go to Obama's college transcripts.

[daddy]

Excepting of course his original Birth Certificate.

[kim]

Well, I found it there, daddy. The Higgs-Boson was conjectured to be capable of destroying the world, and there it is in the computer models which gave us these holocaustic derivatives. QED.
=======================================

[rse]

When I listen to the Obamaphiles who are college educated, some with professional degrees, it is frequently apparent that they know little about current events or economics.

Their hatred of Bush and support of Obama in their minds shows their intellectual heft. Badmouthing Bush seems to be a substitute for being knowledgeable about the world around you and the likely consequences of events.

[Pofarmer]

If you want to spend, you have to find somewhere else to cut.

3 guesses as to where the cuts will come from.

So, is he gonna cut back down to non-deficit spending? Keep current deficits while trying to grow the economy? Yeah, I know it's ridiculous.