Comments on: The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street
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- Hey Mom O, if we redistribute the wealth of those who understood the risks properly and invested accordingly and distribute it to others, why not redistribute the wealth of those homeowners that bought low too. Since we are out of equity on our own homes we can start cashing out our neighbors equity and keep those carts moving over at Walmart.
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- Is someone investigating CDS market manipulation? If someone can bet that anyone''s house will burn down, it is an open invitation to arsonists. It seems likely that the CDS meltdown was engineered.
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- 95% of democrats voted for the bill versus 72% of republicans - though the congressional record does not indicate any opposition based on this provision from either party. This was a popular measure on both sides of the aisle. It was unopposed and for anyone to suggest otherwise is delusional. 60 trillion CDS doesn''t mean anything. The entire value of the underlying collateral would have to be zero. So the actual losses amongst investors who covered these bets is only going to be a small fraction of that. The biggest losses arose at AIG which was unregulated by the Federal Government - it was regulated by democrats in New York State who now claim to see nothing, know nothing and hear nothing. Is Sgt Schultz in charge over there or what?
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- Funny how everyone wants to blame Bush on the financial woes of the country. Tell me, why did Clinton let this bill pass? Why was there no talk of if by anyone to the public, democrat or republican. Where were the democrats while all this was going on?
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- And what party was in the White House and controlled Congress when "side" betting was made legal? We must vote the majority of Republicans out of office Nov. 4!!
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- On your broadcast, Harvey Goldschmidt said that he did not know how much money was involved in the credit default swaps (CDS). However, on Oct. 8, Paul Volker (former Fed. Reserve Chair) said on the Charlie Rose show that $10 trillion were involved in bad debts though derivitives and that $60 trillion were involved in the CDS. Since the U.S. Govt. is currently bailing out such institutions as AIG and others who designed and sold these CDS, I believe American citizens and Congress should understand the magnitude of the CDS problem, as the 2007 GDP was approximately $14 trillion.
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- ........WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.
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- "If you can and you could lay down cents on the dollar to place a bet on the solvency of Wall Street, for example, as some did, when Wall Street became evidently insolvent, that cents on the dollar bet went up 30, 40, and 50 fold. Not everyone who did that wants to get his name in the paper. But there are some spectacularly rich people who came out of this," Grant says.
"Who got richer," Kroft remarks.
"Who got richer, who became, you know, fantastically richer," Grant says.
A lot of them were hedge fund managers. John Paulson''s Credit Opportunities Fund returned almost 600 percent last year, with Paulson pocketing a reported $3.7 billion.
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Where do we go from here?
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Freeze their assets and redistribute on those who lost their home equity, not to those under foreclosure. - Reply to this comment
Wow, and all I want to do is play a $5.00 game of poker online and congress says THAT is illegal.......- Reply to this comment
- You don''t need a lobbyist when the US Treasury Dept. is run by Goldman Sachs. It is its'' own lobby. That is not about to change no matter who wins in a couple of days. Paulson and Rubin made more in a day at GS than their entire tenure at the US Treasury. Clinton made more than $120M after he left office versus around $2m while in the White House, who paid him? Quid pro quo? I don''t know. Bush isn''t going to be any poorer in a few months either. The amazing thing about the latest crop of Obamacons is that they think this time will be different. Ah, hope springs eternal, or in the words of the immortal Maurice Chevalier "Thank God for little girls".
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